


The Only Son of Themyscira

by mitzvahmelting



Category: DC Extended Universe
Genre: Canon Universe, Ensemble Cast, F/F, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Philosophy, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: After his resurrection, they send Clark to train under the Amazons.“But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.”-Aristotle, Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross





	1. May 7th - Bruce

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[Art] The Only Son of Themyscira](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628770) by [architeuthis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/architeuthis/pseuds/architeuthis). 



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> This fic is for the Superbat Reverse Bang! It was inspired by art by Architeuthis ([ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/architeuthis), [tumblr](http://oneiroteuthis.tumblr.com/))  
> Thanks so much to [shrill_fangirl_screaming](%E2%80%9D), [flirtygaybrit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flirtygaybrit/pseuds/flirtygaybrit), [esthete](%E2%80%9D), the writer’s room, my creative writing professor, my knitting club, my mom, and anyone else who read my drafts and listened to me go on and on about this fic for months.

“Tell me again why you’re sticking a giant needle in my arm?” Barry squirms on the countertop, still wearing his damp workout clothes, eyeing the medical equipment suspiciously and flinching when Bruce snaps the latex gloves in place. “Not that I don’t trust you.”

Bruce looks at him. “It’s a perfectly average sized needle.”

“I don’t really spend much time in doctor’s offices,” Barry admits.

From the seat to the right, with a moderately sized bandage covering an open vein at his temple, Victor laughs humorlessly. “Do any of us, really?”

“Well, I figured you’d go to Jiffy Lube,” Barry teases, grinning at Victor, deliberately averting his eyes from Bruce cleaning a section of Barry’s inner arm with an antiseptic wipe.

Victor winks – as much as one can wink, with only a single human eye. “Get my oil changed, huh? Then I guess _you’d_ be going to an electrician.”

“Actually, yeah, more often than you’d expect. I kept shorting out our cable box.” Then Barry glances at Bruce again and flinches – a full body jolt that sends crackles of electricity skimming across his skin.  Bruce feels mildly relieved that the medical gloves insulate his fingers against Barry’s static. Barry complains, “At least the electrician would _warn_ me before they shove a needle in my arm!”

Bruce presses a stress ball into Barry’s left hand, now that the needle is in place. “I told you it wouldn’t hurt.”

Dark blood fills the tubing as it spills from Barry’s vein. “Oh God that’s my blood.”

“You’re fine,” Bruce tells him.

Victor adds, “It’s not a big deal, dude. People donate blood all the time.”

“There’d better be a good reason we’re doing this. I think I’m going to have nightmares.”

Bruce gathers the wrappers from the sterile instruments and disposes them into the bin in the corner. “More than just one good reason,” he informs Barry, again, for the thousandth time. “For example: emergency blood transfusions.”

“Or a DNA sample to check with if we run into your clone,” Victor supplies. “Or a baseline for your healthy vitals in case you get sick. Or we can use it to identify your body if you get fried by an alien.”

“Not funny,” Barry and Bruce mutter in unison, on opposite sides of the room.

Victor shrugs, nihilistically. “Could happen.”

Bruce is reminded of Steppenwolf’s army, of the lasers, of the smell of ozone. “It’s mostly for the blood transfusion,” he says to Barry. “The cave doesn’t exactly have easy access to a blood bank.”

“I wonder why,” says Barry. “Don’t the people of Gotham think you’re a vampire, anyway? Seems reasonable to offer you some snacks.”

“I’ll let them know.”

Barry pouts, squeezing the stress ball rhythmically like a fidget. His eyes dart around the cave impatiently, surely taking stock of all of those extremely delicate artifacts which he hasn’t yet messed with. “Are we the only team members being forced to do this?” he whines, “You’re not making Diana do it.”

Victor snorts, and says, “Bruce can’t ‘make’ Diana do anything.”

Barry nods. “Point taken.”

“Actually,” interjects Bruce, “Diana claims she doesn’t _need_ human medicine.”

“Because she’s a Goddess?” Victor offers, with his eyebrow raised.

“Because she’s a Goddess.”

“And what about Arthur?” Barry asks.

Victor makes a face. “I’m sure he didn’t take too kindly to the idea of human medicine, either.”

“I’ll just—” Bruce shoves one of the desk drawers closed with a bit too much force, “—hook him up to a saltwater drip. That’s practically saline, isn’t it?”

He regrets it a moment later, with the way the boys eye him. He usually keeps a tighter rein on his frustration. He takes a moment to compose himself.

“Man, they really don’t listen to you,” observes Victor.

Barry’s pout deepens. “And we’re the chumps for going along with him.”

“Barry,” Bruce says, in a low, steady voice, “be careful about teasing the man with the needles.”

The boy blanches, and Victor laughs and laughs.

Much of the afternoon passes like this. The boys have been spending more time in the cave ever since the fight with Steppenwolf; Victor because of Barry, and Barry because of his lost puppy syndrome. Barry spends more time around Bruce than even Alfred can stand. He wants to learn, to train, to be better. He doesn’t want to go back to living alone.

Bruce keeps him at arm’s length, but that doesn’t seem to bother Barry, and they—the three of them, because Victor has nowhere else to go—have formed a sort of symbiotic harmony. They keep each other sane, and Bruce trains them, and they all know how to carry their own investigative weight. It’s a manageable arrangement, and it doesn’t hurt that it affords Bruce the opportunity to observe Victor more closely. Diana enthusiastically approves. Alfred approves as well, despite snippy comments about living in a fraternity house.

“Eureka!” announces Diana as she enters the cave from the lake entrance with Arthur in tow. Diana is still dressed in the sweats she was wearing for training, but Arthur has stripped down to his boxers. He is soaking wet and he looks even more exhilarated for it, his eyes flashing inhumanly pale in the fluorescent lights as what little fabric he wears drips lake water onto the concrete.

Bruce, being a human with functioning vision, hesitates for a moment with his eyes on the Atlantean’s body, before returning to the task of labeling Barry’s blood samples. Barry is not so lucky, and he spends a good long moment with his mouth open.

“So?” Bruce asks eventually, as the two newcomers reach the appropriate distance for polite conversation. “What’s the verdict?”

“He heals,” Diana says, proudly. “He heals very quickly. And even more quickly when he’s in the water.”

“No, no,” Arthur disagrees. “I don’t heal fast. It’s just that you all heal slow. And—and by the way, can I just say—” he invades the space near Bruce and gets a hand on Bruce’s elbow before continuing, “your lake up there? Awful water. Can’t see a damned thing.”

A moment’s hesitation. Bruce looks down at his arm, where the Atlantean grips him, and just feels… bewildered, for a moment, that Arthur had the gall.

Bruce hasn’t quite gotten used to the way these people think so _little_ of him. The way they manhandle, the way they laugh at him to his face. The over-familiarity.

Bruce snatches his arm away, and he doesn’t look Arthur in the eyes. “You’re king of the ocean, aren’t you? You clean it.”

“It’s your lake.”

“If you haven’t noticed,” Bruce grunts, “I’m a little busy.” Maybe he tugged the needle out of Barry’s arm too forcefully. Barry flinched, and Bruce tries to temper his tone when he instructs the kid to hold the gauze in place.

And then someone clears his throat, from the entrance of the cave, and Bruce’s blood runs cold.

 “I, uh,” says the Superman, almost too quietly to be heard, “I was told you wanted to use my body for science?” He says it with a joking tone that belies the hesitation in his posture. The phrase itself—the idea of using one’s body for science—has all the metas in the room on edge.

Bruce is frozen in place. He isn’t prepared for this. Last time he’d been able to… prepare himself, for the upsetting double-vision of seeing Clark and the Superman, friend and foe, the calm atmosphere of a friendly afternoon with the metas suddenly thrown against memories of nightmares with the Alien’s hand tightening around Bruce’s throat.

Diana steps forward, and she puts a smile on her face to distract from the tension in the rest of the room. “Kal-El, welcome!” Fearless as ever, she walks right up to the Superman. He carefully offers his hand to shake, but she grips his forearm in a warrior’s greeting. The archaism makes Clark smile a little, helplessly. Diana says to him, “I’m the one who spoke with Mrs. Kent about the matter.”

 _Without consulting me,_ Bruce would interject, if he could find his voice.

“You had coffee dates,” says Clark. “While I was dead.”

Bruce can still feel the weight of the Kryptonite spear in his hands.

“That’s right,” Diana confirms, which is news to everyone else in the room. It isn’t that unusual for Diana to take initiative without consulting anyone, especially not Bruce. “After we lost you in the battle with the Kryptonian monster, I thought it prudent to interview the woman who had managed to keep you alive for so many years. Maybe she could teach me something that would help me protect my new associates.” She gestures broadly to the rest of the team, and she is still smiling.

“And, did she?” Clark asks.

Diana looks at him, seriously. She says, “Martha Hudson Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas has been blessed with the wisdom of Hera. Do not forget this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Clark responds, automatically. Seemingly intimidated by the Amazon, Clark then glances over her shoulder, seeking out Bruce’s eyes. “Um…”

Eye contact with Clark – _Clark,_ not Superman - shakes Bruce out of his stupor.

Bruce clears his throat, and tries to keep his voice low, like the Bat, like a professional. “It wasn’t my idea. It didn’t seem right to ask this of you.”

Squinting in disapproval, Diana points out, “It could save his life, someday.”

“That’s an easy justification for all sorts of evil acts.”

“Are you suggesting I’m evil?” asks Diana.

Bruce winces. “No. But don’t you think it’s a bit uncouth to ask the alien for a DNA sample?”

Clark steps forward.

Bruce flinches, unconsciously. Lots of reasons for that. He tries to suppress it, file it away.

Clark’s hands hang by his thighs, but he faces his palms towards the group, in a semiconscious gesture of peace. “I’m here, aren’t I? It’s fine. Let’s just… get this over with.” He shrugs, and looks at Bruce. “I assume you have some sort of Kryptonite scalpel?”

 “I’m not,” says Bruce, “I can’t—”

“Or, gas? I didn’t like the gas. But if that’s… what’s available…” Clark turns his face away, towards the wall, contemplatively. “It’s fine.”

Diana just watches from behind Clark. She raises an eyebrow at Bruce expectantly. She knows he has Kryptonite medical equipment. She watched him build it, in the last few weeks since the resurrection. Just in case.

Fitfully, Bruce jams two fingers into the intercom button. “Alfred,” he says.

“Right away, sir,” says the amused voice on the other end of the line.

 

 

About an hour later, Clark leaves the cave.

Bruce is surprised to watch him leave. There was a part of him that had expected the Superman to be able to defy the laws of physics at will, such that he would float around like a ghost when covering more than ten yards. Not so. Rather, Clark walks, on the floor, at a steady pace. The deep red of the cape whispers behind him like a veil.

He gives Bruce and the others present (Victor, Barry) a minute nod of goodbye, which feels as formal and alien as a full salute. Then he’s gone.

Moments later, Arthur descends from the same staircase, now dressed, with a six pack of beer and a brown paper bag of fast food. “Right,” he says, tossing the bag to Barry’s waiting arms. “Nothing says ‘welcome to the team’ like treating the dude like a ghost.”

“Man, don’t get on our case,” says Victor, “we’re just following Bruce’s lead.”

Arthur pops the bottlecap—it’s a local brew. “Mm,” he says. “Following Bruce’s lead. Good way to start fights; not a great way to make friends.”

“Whereas the Atlantean would avoid the Superman entirely,” Diana remarks critically from the other end of the cave, approaching with Alfred in tow, carrying the case of samples.

Arthur puts up his hands in defense. “I was getting the kid food,” he points out.

“Not food. Hardly edible,” snaps Alfred, and the case makes a metal _clang_ when it lands on the worktable in front of Bruce. “There you are, Master Bruce. Twenty-four neatly labeled samples of blood and tissue interspersed with blind control specimen as well as samples of specimen Z, retrieved, I would hope, _before_ the Doomsday event.”

“So you _did_ have a kryptonite scalpel,” Arthur infers.

Barry is trying to hide behind Victor’s body, to obscure himself from Alfred’s view while he tucks into his cheeseburger.

Bruce wavers. Wasn’t it wrong, to have done this? To bring Clark – Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas – into a laboratory to test his blood? “Did it… hurt?” he asks Alfred, almost impulsively.

He couldn’t have done it himself. He couldn’t have taken a blade to Clark—he just couldn’t. Not again.

“You know?” says Alfred, “I imagine it did. Not nearly as much as a spear, though.” He clasps his hands, and turns to the rest of the group. “Right, well. _Chez_ Wayne will be serving dinner within the hour if anyone wishes to join; please leave your capes and boots at the door.” 

Then Alfred retreats up the elevator.

Twenty-four samples of blood and tissue. Bruce rests a finger gingerly against the clasps of the case.

“It really was not a big deal,” says Diana, placatingly. “He was very happy to do it.”

“Happy,” Bruce says.

“Well. Cooperative, like Barry. We were right, that he heals under full-spectrum light. The lamps worked.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Diana purses her lips for a moment, in thought. Then, “I spoke with him. I think you and I need to discuss how he will be trained.”

“He can be—” Barry pipes up, but then finishes chewing and swallowing his food. Continuing, he says, “trained with us, right? I mean. Bruce is teaching Victor and me. Don’t you think—”

“Not an option,” Bruce interjects firmly.

“Why not?” asks Barry. “I mean, I know he’s strong and all, but so’s Victor? Unless you think Clark is already a better fighter, which, fair point. But I thought you weren’t worried about—”

“It’s not that,” Bruce tells him.

“Maybe Arthur could train him?” Barry suggests.

Bruce gives Barry a flat look, and Victor laughs. “Right,” says Victor, “Nothing more reassuring in a crisis than the most powerful man on the planet coming to save you, wielding a pitchfork and shouting ‘Yeehaw!’”

Arthur smirks. “I feel like I should be taking offense, but I’m too fond of the idea.”

“What about Diana?”

Bruce looks at her, and Diana meets his gaze steadily. He is… relieved, to see her so calm. She says to the group, “There are things I can teach him, yes. But… Bruce, you and I discussed before the relative merits of group training.”

 _Group training._ That is, being trained as part of a class of students. Bruce’s thoughts turn to old, old memories of his chores in the mountains, scrubbing the floor of the dojo clean of blood and sweat, cooking large meals out of the ingredients his peers had gathered, making an inventory of the weapons and supplies.

Competition. Infighting. Rivalries.

Betrayals. Could he imagine Clark Kent surviving a place like that?

Bruce clears his throat, then asks, “is that really the right choice?”

Diana frowns. “You bear scars from your training?”

He sighs, and turns his attention away from the memories. “Probably had more to do with being surrounded by boys, than the training itself. The Amazons would be different.”

That gets Arthur’s attention. “You’re sending Superman to an island full of beautiful women?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Arthur coughs. “I, uh. Could use some training.”

Barry nails him in the face with a burger wrapper.


	2. May 9th - Martha

She leans over wrong while pouring tea into Father Leone’s cup. She hides the twinge of pain with the distraction of the words that keep pouring out of her – she’s always been a talker. “He came over earlier in the week and I swear it was like he was a stranger. Asking me questions like, did the apartment come furnished, are the bills getting paid, am I seeing anyone. As if a mother could think about dating at a time like this. Have a sugar, dear – do you want cream? I’m sorry there isn’t any coffee; I’ve been stuck on a tea kick ever since Marjorie brought over all those self-help books.”

“No, thank you, tea’s wonderful,” says the vicar, and he’s pleading with her to sit down.

She doesn’t want to sit – she sets down the kettle on the coffee table and crosses past Leone to unlock the front door. That sets Dusty off. “Calm down, old girl, I’m not going anywhere,” Martha chastises the dog with an eye roll.

“It’s-” she starts, “it’s obviously just… incredible to have him back. More than that. Like getting my heart back. But you understand why I… why I’d like you to talk to him. I don’t, you know. Gift horse in the mouth. But _Jesus_ I don’t know what to-” She finally sits on the loveseat across from Leone on the couch, setting her eyes on his priest collar rather than look at his face. “If I ask too many questions I’m afraid I’ll lose him again. I don’t know if it’d hurt worse the second time.”

“I can hardly imagine what you’re going through,” he offers. “Extraordinary circumstances offer little room for stability. It’s moments like these we turn to faith.”

Father Leone is young for his station, but what he lacks in wisdom he makes up for with genuine faith, like stars in his heart and mirrors in his eyes.  He wants to help people; she’s familiar with that kind of eager altruism.

Being around Leone makes Martha’s bones ache. There’s a part of her that wants to cry – she doesn’t. “What do you do,” she asks, “when the universe gives you a miracle – twice? What did I ever do to deserve it? I’m just…”

A tapping on the kitchen window. There’s no balcony, but Superman is floating out there nonetheless. Dusty’s barking. Martha nearly trips over the dog to get there, to push up the window and deliver her son through the threshold and over the coffeemaker. “I have a door, you know,” she tells him, and presses her mouth against his hair forcefully enough to bruise herself – her boy laughs, lets her kiss him and hold him in greeting. She feels like a drowning woman and he lets her. It’s been a few weeks, but there’s still that edge of awkward tension, mismatched puzzle pieces.

“Apparently,” he says, “Clark Kent isn’t supposed to be up and about. Batman says I’m banned from using doors for the foreseeable future.”

Father Leone stands up off the couch. “Kal-el,” he says. His expression is inscrutable and the mug of tea trembles in his hand.

Her son looks at her. “Is this safe?” he asks.

“Hell if I know.” She gets a hand on his too-tall shoulder and she squeezes him, nudging him forward to the vicar. “You remember Father Daniel.”

“Of course,” says Clark, and he offers his hand.

Leone hesitates, but finally he sets down the mug and takes Clark’s hand. “I’m sorry,” Leone says with a self-effacing smile. “I knew what to expect, but it’s still… I was at your wake. I officiated your funeral.”

“Thank you, I think? Is it appropriate to thank you for my own – never mind.”

“Sit, both of you,” Martha tells them. “You’re making me nervous. And Clark, pet the poor girl, she’s been climbing the walls since you left.”

It’s tense and strange. But Clark takes the armchair and Dusty stands up with her paws on his knees, and he pets her good and talks sweetly to her like he always used to, and Martha’s heart hurts in all the strange new ways.

 

Before his death, Clark would visit home once or twice every week. Martha never asked him to; in fact, she encouraged him to use the phone, to be more independent, but he saw through that. He knew that every time she saw him was a blessing in Martha’s book.

There were some people in Smallville who pitied Martha. Martha Kent, whose husband passed and whose son left her for the city. But they didn’t realize – Clark may have left Smallville, but he never left his mother.

Until he passed away, too. And all those neighbors who Martha hadn’t befriended, all those conservative farm folks who Martha had never got along with… they came to her. As a community, they cared for her like she was one of their own. They cooked for her, they helped her tend the corn, they gave her gifts of herbs and honey, fresh milk and knitted afghans, strawberry preserves and homemade muffins, and book after book after book after book. Bundles of self-help books, alongside seventeen copies of the Bible.

 _Lament for a Son_ by Nicholas Woltorstorff, sits next to _The Lord is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm_ by Harold S. Kushner, sits next to _The Unspeakable Loss: How Do You Live After a Child Dies?_ By Nisha Zenoff, sits next to _How to Survive the Loss of a Parent: A Guide for Adults_ by Lois F. Ackner (which is the book they gave Clark when Jon passed away).

She’s not a religious woman. Hard to believe in an Earth-centric religion when your baby boy is from another planet. But in the face of this unexpected outpouring of love and support from her community, she certainly became a touch more spiritual.

 

Father Leone asks, “Do you remember anything from being dead?”

Dusty is leaning flush against Clark’s leg, panting happily and nudging her face underneath his hand whenever he tries to stop petting her. Clark seems to use her as a distraction, looking into her eyes and stroking her soft ears as he thinks. He asks Leone, “Are you looking for me to confirm the Christian faith?”

“Clark,” Martha warns.

“No, it’s alright,” says Leone, warmly, “I’m just looking for you to be honest with me. Tell me what you remember.”

Clark leans back in the armchair. “I think, if I didn’t remember anything, it would be like when you shut your eyes to fall asleep and you feel like it’s suddenly morning. Since it wasn’t like that, it must be that I remember _something._ ”  He leans forward again, for Dusty.

Clark was always so open with Martha. She was his _Ma_ and he never hid his feelings around her, he never censored himself. It’s been different, now that he’s back. Like she’s looking at him from much further away.

The bible never mentions Risen Jesus visiting his mother.

Maybe people change when they die. Maybe it’s just harder to see him as her son, when she sees him as a Deus ex Machina. A divine intervention to save Martha from despair.

How can she even make sense of such a thing?

Clark is looking at her, from his seat in the armchair. He watches her and he speaks carefully because he doesn’t want to upset her. “I don’t remember being dead,” he says, softly, “but I do remember dying.”

Father Leone leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. “Tell me about that,” he says.

Clark swallows, and he meets Dusty’s eyes again. “I said goodbye to Lois,” he forces out. “I ran the monster through with the spear. It lost its hand, earlier in the battle, and there were these… spikes, growing out of the stump wrist.”

Martha’s palms itch. She shuts her eyes.

“It pierced my chest, here,” Clark says, and somewhere beyond Martha’s eyelids he must be pointing out where the wound would have been. She can’t look. “I felt like… I was inside of myself,” he whispers, “like something was dragging me away from what my eyes were seeing. There was… a barrier, forming, between me and the rest of the world. They told me that I finished off the creature with the last of my strength. I don’t remember that.”

Dusty whines, and Martha’s eyes open. Her cheeks are wet. She stands, automatically, and she sits on the arm of Clark’s chair and wraps herself gently around him – he leans in, his body warm and real, solid. “You can keep…” she says, with a flippant gesture of her wrist. “I just need, you know.”

He nods his understanding, his voice caught in his throat. She sighs. Dusty squirms, and wags her tail.

Clark finally says, “It must have been restful, considering how I wasn’t all there when I woke up. Still sleepy, I guess. They should have given me coffee, maybe I wouldn’t’ve…”  He smiles, or grimaces, and huffs out a breath. “Bad joke.”

Father Leone studies him. “You don’t remember seeing any light, hearing any voices?” Leone doesn’t sound like he’s prompting Clark, but that he’s just covering his bases, just confirming the story.

Clark shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Father, but it all happened so fast.”

Leone smiles. “You have nothing to apologize for. Thank you so much for sharing with me.” He sets his mug down on the table. The water filter gurgles in the corner. “Is there anything you’d like to discuss with me, Kal-El, any questions I could help you with?”

“Please call me Clark.”

“Clark,” says Leone, kindly.

Martha stands up off the armchair and ruffles her boy’s hair, before retreating to the kitchen to fetch the plate of cookies. She’s sure they could all use some chocolate, right now.

As she returns, Clark says, “I guess I can’t really question if I was brought back for some greater _purpose_ , can I?” He crosses his arms thoughtfully. “It was my allies who resurrected me, not any God.”

“Sometimes the Lord works through His subjects,” says Leone. “Who is to say your allies weren’t divinely inspired?”

“Maybe,” Clark concedes.

Martha passes him a cookie, without asking, and he breaks into a grin. She says, “I don’t know if your friend Batman would consider himself an instrument of the Lord.”

Clark snorts, and coughs. He covers his mouth and says, “Ma, you’ll make me choke on the cookie.”

“Baby, if it takes a twenty-ton monster to bring you down, I think you can handle the cookie.”

“ _Ma!”_

Martha smiles broadly, then bats the dog away from the food.

Father Leone asks Clark, “What do you think that purpose would be, if you were resurrected for a reason?” Leone then takes his own cookie, giving Martha his thanks.

“Save people? Save the world?” Clark offers, sounding unconvinced. “I was doing that before. Although, now that Clark Kent is dead, I can’t exactly go back to my day job. Maybe I’m supposed to do this full time. Maybe the world can’t afford for me to do anything else but be Superman.”

Father Leone frowns. He leans back in his seat, and shuts his eyes, like he’s trying to remember something. “I think it was… Wolf? Susan Wolf. Philosopher of Ethics.” He nods to himself. “She wrote an essay about a concept she dubbed ‘Moral Sainthood,” where a ‘moral saint’ is a person whose every action is as morally good as possible.”

Martha laughs uncomfortably. “Don’t tell me you’re going to convince my boy to become an actual saint or something.”

Leone startles, and puts up his hands, “No, no, the opposite!” he says. “Wolf concluded that to be a moral saint, to live a life so _dominated_ by one’s commitment to others’ welfare… it wouldn’t be the type of life you’d choose for yourself or your loved ones.”

Clark tilts his head. “Strange thing to hear from a priest.”

Leone smiles. “The point being… it is good to do good, but not at the expense of being your own person. The Lord would never expect that from you, and you shouldn’t expect it from yourself.”

Clark isn’t satisfied with this. He tenses, and Martha wants to reach out and cover his fist with her palm. “But how do I know?” he demands, “How do I know when I’ve done enough?”

“That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself.”


	3. May 12th - Diana

Her heels clack against the marble floor – sometimes she can tell the exact number of people in the hallway based solely on the echo of her shoes. Today the sound resonates, but only because the museum hasn’t opened, and won’t for a few hours yet. To her side and slightly behind follows Clark Kent, without the glasses and posture of his old identity. He is wearing a nice dress shirt and tie, even though she told him the tie wasn’t strictly necessary. He’d said he felt obligated, ‘in a place like this.’

“It was originally a fortress constructed in the twelfth century under Phillip II,” Diana explains, a docent in her element.

She glances back at him. There is a part of her that thinks he looks so… appropriate here, the preternaturally perfect form of a man surrounded by other similar works of art. Clark’s eyes scan across the collection as they pass by, lingering on the exhibit of 17th century landscapes until he realizes that Diana has been watching him. He clears his throat, and speeds a bit to catch up with her.

“Then it became the royal apartments for the French Kings,” Diana continues, her pace even, “and then, when Louis XIV moved to Versailles, the building became a place to display the royal collection, and housed the _Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture_. After the revolution, the National Assembly seized the collection and eventually opened it for public exhibition.”

“That’s… cool,” says Clark.

Diana smiles. “Very cool,” she concurs.

“I can’t believe you work here.” Clark falls into step beside her, adjusting his tie. “They don’t suspect anything? How did you even get the position?”

“I submitted an application, like anyone else.”

He gives her a skeptical look. “What could you possibly have on your resume? Expertise in swords?”

“They may have appreciated my sword craft,” Diana admits, “but surely not as much as my doctoral thesis in Etruscan black-figure pottery in the late seventh century BCE.”

“Oh,” he says.

“I _did_ go to university, Clark,” she tells him, needling his error.

“Of course,” he says.

Flippantly, she courses forward. “Come. I have a feeling there’s someone to meet us, somewhere in my collection.”

 

They eventually come across a man in an overcoat, hands in his pockets, engaging with a statue in the Classical Greek section. He nods at their approach, and almost turns away from the work to greet them, but Diana bypasses that greeting to stand beside Bruce to look at the sculpture with him.

“This statue was a gift from Pope Paul IV to the French king Henri II,” Diana explains. “It was one of the first ancient statues to arrive in France. It is a copy of the original statue, which was lost to time. It was a bronze, attributed to the sculptor Leochares, in the second Classical period of the fourth century BCE.”

The statue itself features the goddess Artemis during the hunt, her flowing chiton tucked up around her knees so she is better able to pursue her quarry.

Bruce taps his lips thoughtfully. “She’s famous, isn’t she?” he asks. “I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before.”

Diana smirks. “You think you’re very funny, don’t you?” She glances back to Clark so as not to exclude him, but he looks lost. “The statue is of the goddess Artemis,” Diana explains. “But the Romans called her Diana.”

“So this is the _Diana of Versailles,_ ” says Bruce. Then he turns towards Diana and ducks to kiss her cheek in greeting. “The sculpture is not nearly as lovely as the original.”

Diana gently pushes him away, smiling despite herself. She is glad that he’s acting more like himself, that he isn’t as bothered by Clark’s presence as last time. Perhaps because he had more time to prepare. She teases him, “You only put effort into being charming when you’re wearing fancy clothing.”

He smiles back, saying, “No outfit is complete without carefully prescribed flirtations.”  Then he turns away from the statue to face the both of them, and with the change in topic some of his pretention fades. “Anyway. We had something to discuss.”

Clark squints at him. “How did you get in here, in the first place? Diana has been with me all morning, and the museum hasn’t opened yet.”

Bruce tilts his head, giving a hint of aristocratic contempt. “You _do_ know who I am, don’t you?”

Clark’s jaw tenses. “Point taken.”

Neither man seems enthused to be in the other’s presence, Diana observes. Their smiles don’t quite reach their eyes. Bruce was prickly enough back in the cave, but at least his disposition had been deferent and submissive, or at least something like ashamed. Here, though, in public as Bruce Wayne, he looks Clark in the eye and he challenges Clark to look away. It’s as if he has put his walls back up.

Diana ignores it all, for now. They have more important matters to attend to than Bruce’s sensitive feelings. She explains, “We wanted to meet with you, Clark, because we would like to send you for training with the Amazons in Themyscira.”

This startles Clark. “Training? I’m not… training in _what?”_

“Combat training,” Diana clarifies. “You need someone to teach you how to be a warrior.”

“I don’t want to be a warrior.”

Bruce crosses his arms, but doesn’t say anything, staring at the ground.

Diana nods at Clark. “I understand. None of us wish for there to be wars. But that isn’t why we train. We train so that, _if_ a war arrives on our shores, we have the skills and the wisdom to beat it back, and return peace to our world.”

Clark crosses his arms as well. “They’ve already made me out to be a weapon. Now you want to turn me into a more _efficient_ weapon.”

“A person is not a weapon,” Diana tells him.

“If someone were to attack the Earth,” interjects Bruce, “what would you do?”

Clark speaks without even thinking. “I would defend it. I’ve done it before, and I would do it again.”

“Of course,” says Bruce. “And we want you to train, so that _next_ time you try to defend the world, it doesn’t end with you dead.”

Clark scoffs. “So you think it was my _inexperience_ that killed me.”

“It certainly may have contributed,” says Diana.

“You don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that I was poisoned?”

The words come out with deliberate cruelty. Diana frowns. Bruce doesn’t say anything; he walks to the other side of the gallery and keeps his fists in his pockets. Clark just watches him.

“Kal-el,” Diana says, softly, “We won’t pretend to command you to do anything. It is entirely within your rights to refuse to go to Themyscira. But based on my conversations with you, and with your mother, I’ve come to believe that you have been isolated for too long. You have taken too much burden on your shoulders alone. My sisters can offer you a community where you can _learn_ without lives in the balance, where people can support you and help you grow.”

Then, Bruce’s voice from the other end of the room: “Maybe you don’t remember the tactical errors you made in the field. Maybe you’re so caught up in the savior narrative that you don’t realize how many unnecessary hits you’re taking. You’re being reckless.”

“I’m being _careful,”_ Clark counters, “I’m trying not to cause unnecessary harm.”

Bruce marches a few steps back in their direction. “If you keep holding back, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“If I wasn’t holding back, you’d be dead.” Clark says this not like a threat, but like an objective fact.

“So what?” challenges Bruce, stepping into Clark’s space. “If a man throws his fist at you, you don’t worry about him bruising his knuckles. You punch back.”

“Is that it?” Clark asks him, “You kill me, and then you _blame me_ for letting it happen?”

Bruce swallows. Keeps his eyes level with Clark’s.

Clark says, “I may not have trained in martial arts or swords, but my dad taught me how to live honorably, and that’s served me pretty damn well. Maybe you should try it.”

 

Bruce walks away from it. “I have a meeting,” he says. “Let me know when you’re ready to start taking this seriously.”

Clark looks like he wants to respond – the dig at him not taking things “seriously” must be tempting – but he doesn’t.  He and Diana watch until Bruce is out of sight, and then Clark covers his face with his arms and muffles a shout of frustration. It’s an awkward look on him, with the dress shirt straining against his elbows.

“What was that,” asks Diana, finally. “What – is that normal, for you two?”

“We hardly know each other,” Clark admits, “I don’t think there is a normal.”

There is a bench in the center of this room, and Clark chooses to sit. All the better to keep his head in his hands. Diana feels bewildered by the animosity still draining from the atmosphere.

“Why did I say that?” Clark asks aloud, “I don’t know why I said that. I know that’s exactly the wrong way to speak to him.”

“Do you hate him?” queries Diana. Earlier today, she thought she knew the answer to that question. Now she’s not so sure.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Good Lord, what’s going on with me?”

She sits next to Clark, smoothing down her skirt. “You feel troubled.”

She reminds herself that Clark has only been alive again for… maybe a month, now? From his perspective, he’s dealt with the Doomsday crisis, his fight with the Justice League, and his fight with Steppenwolf in short succession, let alone the emotional fallout of his loved ones’ grief. And he’s _young_ , and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s holding himself to an impossibly high standard.

She remembers holding herself to that standard.

She says, “You know that Bruce is right, in his way.  You do need to better equip yourself to fight these battles.”

His eyes shut tight, his nose wrinkling. “I know.”

“But that isn’t the only reason to go to Themyscira.”  Her hand finds his shoulder. He is a large man, even though sometimes it feels like he hasn’t yet grown into his skin. She squeezes, sympathetically. “You could use a break. Take the time to rest, to focus on just one thing, for a while, instead of everything in the world at once.”

Unlike with Bruce, Clark listens to Diana, and he thinks before speaking. His voice is softer. “Themyscira is… just an island, isn’t it? Not some sort of parallel universe.”

“Yes, it is an island. It is hidden from mankind, but that is an illusion, not a true barrier.”

“I could still be Superman. I could still… you know. Be a commuter student.”

“I suppose you could,” Diana agrees. “I wouldn’t advise it, though.”

“No?” he asks, curiously.

She looks down at her hands, thoughtfully. “I have worked in higher education institutions for many decades, now. Sometimes as myself, other times in disguise. The career academics (those who would be called ‘philosophers’ in the truest sense; lovers of wisdom) occasionally take breaks, six months to a year of paid leave. It’s called a sabbatical, from the root word ‘sabbath,’ ‘to rest.’ They use this time to devote themselves fully to a personal project. They travel for research, they write a book, they further their studies. When they return, they are rejuvenated, ready to accomplish anything.”

Clark frowns. “Superman is not an academic concept. His presence or absence has an immediate impact on the state of the world.”

Diana shakes her head, smiling sadly. “Superman has been dead for almost two years. The world survived.”

“Individuals died,” says Clark.

“Yes,” confirms Diana, “but individuals always die. Even Superman cannot save everyone.”

“But he should at least _try._ He should… I…” His voice goes tight, and Clark’s face returns to the palms of his hands, head bowed helplessly before the statue of Artemis and the doe. “Diana,” he chokes out, “how old are you?”

The question catches her off-guard, but she takes a moment to think, and she answers honestly. “I have lived among mankind for a little over a century. As for my life in Themyscira… time passes differently on the island. It is… abstract, complicated.”

“You must be very wise,” Clark suggests, voice muffled by his wrists. “There must be something you can tell me, something you can teach me about when it is the right time to act.  I want to do everything I can to help people, but I’m afraid that there won’t be enough of me left to give.  I’ll end up killing myself trying to do what’s right. At least… that’s what the vicar warned me.  A friend of my mother.”  He sighs, and lifts his face again, gazing absently at the sculpted form of the deer. “On the other hand, I can hear my father’s voice in my head. Telling me, ‘Clark, this is the moment you decide what kind of man you’re going to be. The whole world is watching.’”

Artemis is watching Diana.

“I fell in love with a man,” Diana admits in a whisper, averting her eyes from the statue. “At the end of the Great War. He sacrificed himself to save me, to save the world, and I… could not handle that. I had just lost the woman who was like a second mother to me, and then I lost my lover, too. For many years I could do nothing, I was grieving so deeply.”

“I understand,” says Clark, “I need to keep from dying, I understand that—”

 _“No,_ ” Diana chastises him, wiping tears from her face. “You think you know the end of this story, but you _don’t._ Listen.”

He falters. “I’m sorry,” he says softly.

“What do you think happened after the Great War?” she asks. “The spread of fascism. The Nazis. Millions and millions of dead.”

She is crying in earnest, now.

“Recently, when I save people in this city from violence, they say thank you, they say, ‘I don’t know what would have happened to us, if you had not been there.’ But I have seen the photographs. I know the faces of the people I abandoned.”

“Diana,” Clark tries to comfort, tries to touch her, but he can’t. She is grateful that he doesn’t try to absolve her of responsibility. He understands what it feels like, to know that you _could have done something._

“On the other hand,” she continues, trying to reign in her voice, “there is Batman. There is what Batman has wrought on his city. In the poorest communities, people are afraid to leave their homes. Children fear that their parents will be taken away from them in the night. Criminals branded guilty before any trial.”

“I remember,” says Clark.

“Bruce and I have each made so many mistakes. Our hope for you is that you will become _better_ than us.” She touches his knee. “We want you to take a sabbatical, so that when you return to the world, when you _really_ return, you will be a fully realized hero, and you will be secure in your own decisions.”

He doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he takes his glasses from his breast pocket, wipes them clean, and puts them on. Then he lets out a long breath.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to wear the glasses anymore,” Diana says, teasingly. Her voice still carries notes of sorrow, but she’s getting there.

“It helps me think,” he admits. Then he asks, “what’s the weather like in Themyscira?”

She smiles, and stands. Keeping her voice low, she tells him, “I have an artifact in my office that I can use to send a message to my sisters on the island. I’m going to tell them to prepare for your arrival in the coming days. Would you like to see how it works? It’s very… cool.”

He grins. “Lead the way.”


	4. May 23rd - Alfred

“Well,” announces Alfred as he enters the cockpit, “I’m afraid it’s just me, this round. I promise I don’t bite.” He takes his seat at the controls and runs through the pre-flight checklist with casual familiarity.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” says the Kent boy, “I would have flown myself, but—”

“But Superman doesn’t come equipped with GPS. Really, it’s no bother, I’m happy to do it. Now do yourself a favor and buckle up, lad; you’ll crash through the window.”

They get in the air without any trouble. A bit silly to waste all this fuel on just the two of them, but it’s the only plane in the Wayne hangar that can make the trip _and_ keep cloaked the whole way to avoid the Russian satellite trackers. Still, the boy keeps himself and his belongings within a small little square of the aircraft as if he wants to take as little space as possible, his suitcase tucked under his feet.

He’s wearing a Kansas State sweatshirt and farmhand jeans, and he looks like he’s two clicks away from jumping out of his skin. “You know,” says Alfred, once they’re in the air and cruising, “Superman or not, I’ve a feeling you’ll get cramps if you keep sitting like that.”

He laughs uncomfortably and tries to consciously relax his posture. “I’m sorry, just a little nervous.”

Alfred hums, and checks the time. “Well we’ve got seven hours yet before you’ve anything to be nervous about.” He flips the autopilot and stands from the captain’s seat. “Shall I fetch us some tea?”

Kent’s eyes widen. “You can just… leave the controls?”

Alfred scoffs. “Of course I can—most commercial flying is just managing the autopilot, and _this_ old girl has Artificial Intelligence. Lovely bit of tech Master Wayne coded before he started spending all his time punching things.  Oolong or jasmine?”

“Whatever you prefer.”

“In _that_ case, we’re having hot toddies.” Alfred pauses halfway to the kitchenette, then turns to ask, “Does alcohol affect you?”

Kent shrugs. “More or less. Mostly less,” he says, squirming a bit. “You’re sure it’s okay to drink while piloting?”

Alfred almost snorts, but he refrains, saying only, “I’m in an airplane with Superman; how much safer could I be?”

 

It’s not very exciting to look out the window. For a long time, all they can see is the tops of the clouds, and, other times, the vast expanse of ocean far below them. Limitless, and boring.

“If you ask me,” Alfred says, then blows into his mug to cool it off, “I think it’s rather rude of them to leave you to make the trip alone.”

Kent holds his drink with both hands, his thumb sliding along the rim in thought. “I’m not really alone,” he says.

Alfred smiles despite himself, setting his mug in the holder. “Well, that’s very sweet of you, Mister Kent, but I don’t really count, do I? Those two are supposed to be your colleagues.”

The other man winces. “Please just call me Clark.”

Alfred nods. “Clark.”

“It’s not Diana’s fault,” he goes on, “she planned to be here but something came up with work. Real work—did you know she practically runs the Louvre?”

“Yes, and she’s promised me a tour someday, as soon as all this superhero business settles down.” Alfred huffs a laugh, “I told her that was very optimistic thinking.”

“I don’t know how she manages those obligations, really. When I worked at the Daily Planet… well, I hardly worked.”

“Evidently, she does so by prioritizing antiquities over visiting her mother,” Alfred remarks.

Clark makes a face. “Actually, I’m not clear on whether Diana is even allowed to return to the island. It sounded like there were some… political issues there.”

“She’s not allowed to step foot on the island, but she’s able to curry favor for you to vacation there?”

“She didn’t really need to curry favor; it sounds like they weren’t going to block me out in the first place. Their customs ban men… but they don’t say anything about banning Kryptonians.”

Alfred glances at the fuel gauge, out of habit more than necessity. “Right, well,” he says, “I guess we’ll just have you jump from the air, then, is that right?”

Clark’s eyes widen. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Surely you could land for the night… I mean… that seems kind of insane to not even let you take a stopover.”

“I can tell there must be some very carefully orchestrated diplomacy going on here.”

“You have no idea,” Clark laughs. He sets his mug down and leans over to rifle through his bag for a moment, retrieving what looks like a plain envelope. “If Queen Hippolyta gives me a hard time, I’m supposed to just give her this letter.”

“Any idea what’s in it?”

“According to Diana, the gist is, ‘Hello, Mother. I killed Ares. You owe me one.’”

Alfred sets down his drink before he chokes on it. “Ares, as in, the Greek God of war?”

“Yes sir.”

“Jesus… really puts Gotham in perspective, doesn’t it?”

 

The boy talks a bit about his mother, at Alfred’s prompting, especially when Alfred admits that, while he hadn’t gotten a chance to meet Martha Kent personally, he had been keeping an eye on her these past few months, making sure her needs were met. Clark smiles when he talks about her.

When Alfred asks about Lois, it startles Clark. “It’s funny,” he says, “everyone seems to be avoiding talking about her.”

“Did you have a falling out?” asks Alfred.

“No, not at all. We – we love each other, very much.” He touches the ring finger of his left hand, unadorned. “It hurts, though. It’s… I think that the man she loved died.”

“Hmm,” Alfred hums, “you don’t think there’s something to be said for walking and talking like a duck?”

Clark shakes his head. “To die, and then be resurrected… there’s a nihilism that takes root. I’m trying not to let it influence me, but. I also can’t say I’m the same person that I was. And… besides, she _mourned_ me.” His fingers form a loose fist. “I can’t ask her to overcome her grief just to go back to the way things were.”

“Have you asked how she feels on the matter?”

Clark gives a mirthless smile, which looks… unsettling, on his face. “Yes, actually. Like I said… when someone is resurrected, there’s a nihilism that takes root. We both… well. You know, from my perspective no time had passed at all. I was the one holding on to…”

The boy trails off, and Alfred nods. “I see.”

“She offered to try. For me. She was willing to try to go back to the way things were, if I really thought it would work. But I couldn’t… I was a ghost in her life.”

Alfred nods, thoughtfully. The story feels familiar. “You know,” he tells Clark, “I had a lover, before I joined the service. Same sort of situation. Well, not _exactly_ the same, as I didn’t die, but…”

“Where did you serve?”

“That’s, uh,” Alfred smirks, and clears his throat, “classified.”

Clark looks at him in wonder. “Really? You were some kind of spy?”

“A very good one, actually.  You didn’t think all of Batman’s success was thanks to some mountain gurus, did you?” Alfred laughs, then sighs. “Secrets are very bad for relationships. I don’t recommend them. Nor do I recommend gallivanting around the world before the age of cell phones, _assuming_ that your love notes reach their intended destination.”

A sympathetic head tilt from Superman. “Is that what happened? She stopped getting your letters?

“He,” Alfred corrects. “Not sure if he stopped receiving them or stopped caring. He got tenure at university, I got dropped from the service for trying to get homosexual missives through the pony express. Our lives were going in _completely_ opposite directions and, while he was relieved to see I was not in fact dead, there was no real relationship to return to. Shame, really. I can goddamn guarantee I would have kept his house cleaner than his trophy wife.”

Clark is smiling at him strangely.

Alfred takes a look at the two empty mugs in front of him and mentally kicks himself. “I’ve been very talkative, haven’t I?”

Clark laughs, and it’s nice to see his posture has loosened and his shoes are no longer tucked under his chair. “No complaints here,” he says. “I’m really happy to get to know you. You don’t drink very often, do you?”

“Only when there’s no chance of anyone dying – you can make your own guess as to how often that is.” He shakes his head, muttering, “Master Wayne drinks plenty for the both of us.”

“Is that right?”

Alfred nods. “I suppose he thinks he’s more liable to die by explosion than by liver failure. Although, at this rate…” he leans back in the chair, “he’s nearing forty, isn’t he? Blimey, I’m old.”

Clark makes a token attempt to assure Alfred otherwise, which Alfred brushes off, and then they both go silent for a moment. Alfred has half a mind to text Bruce a reminder to take his medications. He almost never does so without Alfred putting the collection of pill capsules directly under his nose. It’s not that he truly _forgets_ (the flaring joint and muscle pain is hard to overlook), but without Alfred’s insistence he tries to forgo them. Just another in a long list of self-destructive behaviors he’s been accumulating since childhood.

Alfred gives Superman a sidelong glance. “Please don’t let my complaining color your judgement of him. Not like he needs my help making enemies.”

Clark hesitates, then says, “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you work for him? It can’t be the money.”

“I haven’t wanted for a thing since Martha hired me, all those years ago.” A sigh. “God rest her soul.”

Clark doesn’t say anything.

Alfred glances at him. “You haven’t really heard the story, have you?”

Clark bites his lip. “Not… in empathetic terms, no.”

Ah, yes, the battle. The harsh voice over the comms, _‘My parents taught me a different lesson, dying in the gutter for no reason at all…’_ To even remember it is a pain through Alfred’s chest, to remember Bruce’s voice sounding so lost to rage and heartlessness.

“I suppose there isn’t anything unique, anymore, about a random act of gun violence. About thirty years ago, I was called to the GCPD to retrieve an eight-year-old boy whose parents had been shot dead in front of him. His trousers were soaked with their blood. They’d only gone to the movies.”

“Christ.”

“It’s an oversimplification to suggest that an event like that could possibly explain anything that happened in the years that followed. But, well. It’s such common knowledge, that you may as well be made aware.” Alfred stands from the controls and brings his mug back to the kitchenette without a word. The tea is still in the kettle, and he fixes himself another drink.

As he does so, he continues, “It’s also an oversimplification to say that I stayed with Master Wayne out of something like pity or duty, especially considering that he’s now his own man and he shouldn’t need a caretaker.  The truth is twofold: one, he certainly _does_ need a caretaker, because he’s an _idiot_ who can’t manage to keep himself whole for any reasonable length of time; and two, because I love the poor sod. I love him, more than I’ve ever loved another person in my entire life.” His voice chokes and his knuckles are white around the handle of the mug, and the kettle is shaking in his hand. “I love him like he’s my own _son,_ and every… every stupid, misguided, suicidal decision he’s ever made feels like a… a hand, just reaching into my chest and wrenching my heart out.”

Alfred is usually very good at holding himself together. Especially around Bruce. But Bruce isn’t here, and… and what once was his mug is now scattered shards of ceramic in the bowl of the utility sink.

“Are you alright?” yelps Superman, jumping to his feet.

Alfred puts a hand up at Clark to wait. Then he shuts his eyes, puts his lips to the whiskey bottle, and drinks as much as he can stand before the burn gets too intense.

He sets the whiskey down. “Do you have any idea…” he says, “do you have any idea what it feels like to watch a man you love just… just march towards his death, refusing to let anyone save him?”

Remembered horror alights in Kent’s face, tears welling up in his eyes.

Alfred curses. “Oh, bloody fuck, of course you do. God save us.” He surges forward and pushes the whiskey bottle into the boy’s hands. “Clark Kent, that is not a fate I would wish on my greatest enemy.”

“I’m sorry,” Clark rasps out, “it’s just… my dad. I’d rather not bring it up.”

Alfred’s hand finds Clark’s shoulder, and he holds it there a moment. Then he says, “Understood,” and he lets go, returning to the captain’s chair. “The point,” he says finally, “the point is just… when Bruce behaves like an arse, just know that it’s not something that comes from personal malice. I don’t think that man has even the capacity to hate another person. When he acts belligerent, it comes from _fear,_ from _ignorance,_ from the urge to self-destruct. It’s… it’s not an excuse, and it doesn’t justify anything. But…” Alfred shakes his head, “but just know that he’s my _son,_ and maybe hold off from giving him the good sock in the jaw that you and I both know he deserves.”

 

A few hours later, they reach the coordinates where the island is supposed to be. It looks like open ocean below them, which Diana had told Alfred to expect. No radar will help you, she had said, nothing will detect the island until you are inside of its magic. Alfred noses the plane down, and trusts her. Worst case scenario, Superman will save the day.

30,000 ft. 20,000 ft. 10,000 ft. When they get low enough, Alfred reconfigures the plane to use the vertical landing gear, because it’s not like he’ll be able to use a runway. It isn’t until around 8,000 ft. that the ocean seems to fade into a mirage of landscape below, and the island of the Amazons comes fully into view. The proportion of rock face to foliage reminds Alfred of some of the islands off the cost of the motherland. He scans for a patch of relatively flat beach, and brings the girl down slowly.

“Well,” he says to Clark when they reach the ground, “It’s all on you, now.”

Clark doesn’t seem too thrilled about that, but he plasters on a smile and watches through the plane’s window the group of horses trotting down the cliff to greet them. “Will you, uh,” he says, “will you come with me?”

It’s something in the wording of his question that reminds Alfred how a familiar companion can be a comfort when one is faced with new and terrifying circumstances. Alfred studies the approach of the horses and nods, glancing down regretfully at his loafers. “I don’t suppose I’ve time to change my shoes?”

“You could go without,” Clark suggests.

Alfred flicks him in the shoulder. “Unhelpful.”

 

Being around Clark feels like being around Bruce – or, rather, feels like being around Bruce twenty years ago. Almost-bright smiles and the tug of adventure, the absurd triumph of impossible feats.

It is the Queen herself who greets them. She looks as if she’s just come out of a classical painting, dressed in toga and furs and roman-style sandals, sat astride an enormous white steed, her golden circlet catching the glint of the sun. “Mr. Kent, Mr. Pennyworth,” shouts Hippolyta down to them, “It is a great honor to welcome you to Themyscira.”

Alfred has a strange urge to congratulate the Queen’s horse, for standing so steadfast in the face of the mechanical giant of the airplane. The same could not be said of the Queen’s guard, who keep their hands on the hilts of their swords, and their eyes trained on the machine.

Clark clears his throat. “You must be Queen Hippolyta,” he says, much more softly than she had. “It is… a great honor to meet you.” The woman to the Queen’s right makes a face in the silence that follows, and Clark tenses. “I’m sorry,” he adds, nervously, “I’m unfamiliar with… is it customary to bow?”

When Clark gets nervous, his whole posture changes, his shoulders hunching in on himself. He becomes smaller, and his hands grasp in front of him. Something in the Amazons relaxes at this, and a couple exchange mirthful glances behind the Queen. Alfred relaxes as well – good, the boy is being honest and apologetic, and it’s having exactly the intended effect, communicating no-harm via nonverbal cues.

In situations like these Bruce tended more towards subterfuge. It’s refreshing to watch Clark rely so heavily on honesty, and on the good nature of the Amazons.

“It is no trouble,” says Hippolyta, warmly, “You are my guest. Are you able to ride on horseback? We will escort you to the city.”  She turns her steed around without waiting for an answer; another woman comes forward and dismounts.

“Is it alright if Mr. Pennyworth keeps the plane parked on the island overnight?” Clark asks, “It’s a very long flight back. I know it hadn’t been arranged for yet, but...”

Hippolyta twists to look over her shoulder, over the furs of her cloak. She’s smiling fondly. “Actually, I had hoped Mr. Pennyworth would join us for dinner. We have rooms prepared for the both of you.”  Then she and a couple of her guard are galloping back up the hill.

Four Amazons remain, all dressed in leather armor and skeptical expressions. One of the women nudges her horse forward and dismounts, before looking at Alfred expectantly.  Alfred gazes up at the height of the mottled warhorse with trepidation, weighing his options.

Clark is looking at Alfred, with mild alarm. He whispers, “Any idea how she knew who you were?”

Alfred shrugs, whispering back, “I don’t make a habit of questioning the abilities of magic warrior women.” Then, louder for the whole group, Alfred announces, “I think I’d best change into more appropriate attire; I’ll just be a moment.”

He claps Clark’s shoulder as he turns back to the plane, and then walks up the gangway with a prickle of adventure and glee in his heart.


	5. May 24th - Victor

He doesn’t sleep, and he doesn’t eat. He has trouble enjoying media anymore; it’s hard to process the appeal of an audiovisual experience when all he’s seeing are bytes of data.

People, though. People are still real, to him. He likes being around people. Despite being a metahuman, Barry is one of the most organic people that Victor knows, in the sense that he’s half-governed by his most basic functions, always concerned with eating and metabolizing and looking for his next meal. He likes being around Barry, especially.

Barry’s taking care of personal business right now, though. Victor knows that Barry is visiting his father in prison, but Barry doesn’t realize Victor knows that. No one realizes what Victor knows.

It’s exhausting pretending to be the person he once was. It’s also exhausting pretending to be something other than a person. Victor is both, and neither, and he can’t seem to train his brain to go back to its old tumultuous patterns of thinking when everything is so pristine and organized in the rest of him. Sometimes he’s able to joke around, and engage with Barry and the others, but when he’s left alone he’s more like… this other thing.

His awareness is expanded. Like he’s Doctor Manhattan but everyone thinks he’s still Jon Osterman.

He hates those comics.  Dad thought they were neat.

Bruce is on the phone, and Victor is listening. It takes 0.0001% of his total RAM. It takes most of his human focus. He wants to watch Bruce and understand Bruce because… he’s fascinating? Or because he’s challenging, and Victor wants to challenge himself to understand.

 _“Alfred’s not back yet,”_ Bruce says.

 _“Are you able to track his phone or the plane?”_ Diana asks, calmly, on the other end of the line.

_“No.”_

_“Then he must still be on the island,”_ she says. _“Don’t worry about it.”_

_“He’s a trespasser, though. What if they’ve taken him hostage or—”_

_“Clark would not let that happen,”_ says Diana placatingly.

_“If he’s not back by sundown tonight—”_

_“If you still cannot reach the plane by this evening,”_ says Diana, _“I will send a message to my mother asking after him.”_

 _“If this goes south,”_ warns Bruce, _“I’m blaming you.”_

 _“It is sweet that you are so concerned for him,”_ she teases.

The lake house doorbell rings. Lois Lane is the one who rings the lake house doorbell, but Bruce probably doesn’t know this, because he isn’t watching the security camera feeds. Victor is watching the security camera feeds – it takes 0.1% of his CPU.

 _“I have to go, someone is at the door and_ Alfred isn’t here to answer it,” Bruce startles as he enters the kitchen, his cellphone still against his ear. He looks at Victor, and Victor looks back at him, which takes 4% of Victor’s GPU. Victor puts on a lopsided smile at Bruce’s surprise. “What are you doing here?” Bruce asks him, “I thought you were with Barry.”

“Barry went out,” Victor says.

Diana laughs, _“I will go, Bruce, it sounds like you have your hands full. Goodbye.”_

“Talk to you later,” Bruce says into the phone, and hangs up the call. He returns the phone to his pocket. Then he keeps looking at Victor, like he is trying to process. He is so much slower at processing, and Victor loves that he doesn’t have to think as slowly as everyone else, even if it makes him feel distant. At least Barry can keep up with him. Bruce asks, “What are you doing?”

Victor is interfacing with the internet router. “You rout the cave internet through the lake house,” he explains. “I’m working to enhance the lake house encryption – can’t believe you made it this long without a breach.”  He says this as if it is all he’s doing; it’s not. It takes 13% of his CPU. Bruce doesn’t need to know this.

“Oh,” says Bruce. Lois Lane rings the doorbell again, and that takes Bruce’s attention. “Carry on,” he says to Victor, as he goes to open the door.

Lois Lane is there, and this surprises Bruce, which makes Victor laugh to himself, quietly in the corner.

“Miss Lane?” Bruce says.

“Mr. Wayne,” she responds, smiling.

A beat passes. “Please, come in,” he says, finally, holding the door open for her. The taxi is driving away. “Did you… happen to be in the neighborhood?”

“Something like that,” says Lois. She is dressed in her professional clothes, with a medium heel and a nice leather messenger bag. Bruce is still wearing his athletic gear. Victor has been wearing sweats, consistently, because he hasn’t been leaving the lake house.

“Can I get you something?” Bruce asks, politely.

“Do you know how to navigate the kitchen without your trusty butler?” Lois teases, letting Bruce hang her light jacket by the door.

“How did you know Alfred was out?”

“Clark texted me from the plane.”

“Of course,” says Bruce, leading her into the kitchen, “Please, sit. I do know where things are in my own house. Coffee?”

Victor is standing by the kitchen counter near the router, and he nods at Lois, who flinches at the red LEDs, but nods back politely. After a quick glance to Bruce, who is acting as if the cybernetic occupant of his kitchen is a familiar entity, Lois smiles. “I don’t think we’ve met,” she says as she nears him, and she holds out her hand.

“Victor Stone,” he says, and shakes her hand. His left hand is still plugged into the router, which unsettles her, but she’s being very polite with him, and it makes him want to smile at her.

“Lois Lane,” she says, “It’s nice to meet you, Victor. I think… I saw you at Heroes Park, that day, didn’t I? You’re part of the new team.”

“That’s right,” says Victor, and then, “It’s nice to meet you, too. I’ve read your work. I get that they nominated you for the piece on Kasnian banking, but the shady datamining business is what should have won the Pulitzer.”

Lois furrows her eyebrows and grins, then turns to Bruce and tells him “Okay, Victor is my favorite.”

Bruce offers coffee again, and Lois declines. Then he asks, “So, Miss Lane, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

She looks at Vic apologetically and murmurs, “I’m sorry, it’s actually a… private matter.”

“I’ll head down to the cave,” offers Victor. He disengages from the router and leaves the room immediately, before either of them can react.

It will make them feel more comfortable, and he’s glad to help them relax.

Victor takes the elevator down, and Lois sits at the kitchen table in the security feed.

Bruce doesn’t need to know that Victor watches. It’s just… a way of monitoring the space. Self-defense mechanism. In some ways Victor isn’t even in control of it; he monitors the feeds passively, automatically. Just because his mind might pay special attention to the conversation he was ejected from doesn’t mean there’s any particular moral weight to the decision.

Watching people keeps him from getting lost in the mechanics. And he _likes_ Lois, he thinks she’s smart and he wants to learn from her, too.

He plugs in to the internet, relegates half of his attention to scanning and memorizing the police databases like Bruce had instructed at the end of training yesterday, and the rest of his attention to Lois.

They exchange more pleasantries upstairs, and Lois says, _“It’s about Clark,”_ and Bruce says, _“I figured as much.”_

She doesn’t seem to say anything for a moment, like she needs to work herself up to it.

 _“You aren’t seeing him anymore, are you?”_ prompts Bruce. Victor knew this from the tracker Bruce installed in Clark’s phone, and from the additional tracker that Victor placed in the Superman boots before the resurrection. But just keeping track of Clark’s movements around the planet is _nothing_ compared to keeping track of the _why._ Why he and Lois aren’t seeing each other, why Clark keeps visiting his mother, _why._ That’s what Victor wants to process, wants to understand.

_“I wanted to talk to you about… what’s changed. With him.”_

_“Has something changed?”_

Lois sighs. _“Yes and no. I don’t want you to think he’s turned into some kind of… different person. He’s still Clark, he’s still Kansas. He’s just…”_

 _“Just?”_ Bruce prompts again, but Lois has crossed her arms. That’s a visual cue that Victor is teaching his other half – body language, and what it means, when you try to predict where a conversation is going. His human half has no problem with this, but. Maybe the distinction between the two halves isn’t so obvious anymore and he’s trying to just… keep practicing.

 _“You know, my mother was a psychic,”_ says Lois, apropos of nothing. _“I grew up in a hippy dippy house. Strings of beads instead of doors. Séances.”_

_“He’s not a ghost, Lois.”_

_“That’s not what I’m saying – but thank you, Bruce, for your faith in my rationality.”_

Part of Victor snickers. It’s always funny when people call Bruce out. He’s not sure why that is.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ says Bruce, _“Continue, please.”_

_“You know that’s why I got into journalism, was so I could tell stories without the influence of the personal biases of people like you?”_

_“Ouch,”_ Bruce murmurs good-naturedly.

Lois smiles at him, affectionately. _“So,”_ she continues, _“we talked about people who have… major awakenings, and how those moments influence their character later on. Like near-death experiences… or, in this case, actual death experiences. Sometimes when you come back… you bring something back with you.”_

Bruce frowns. _“Do you believe in this literally, or figuratively?”_

_“I don’t know if I believe in this at all. But I think… it’s a useful touchstone for what I’m trying to say.”_

_“Which is…?”_

_“I think the Clark that I knew was a farm boy thrust into incredible circumstances, and trying to adapt to those circumstances. But the Clark that came back... has internalized some of those incredible circumstances. Does that make sense?”_ Lois licks her lips and stares at the table. _“I don’t think I’m wording this correctly.”_

_“Take your time.”_

_“I think he’s more Superman than he was before. I think… that thing that Superman is, that idea of a messianic figure… I think he’s become that, more so than before.”_

_“So… you don’t think he’s a ghost, but you think he’s the messiah?”_

_“Bruce, please.”_ She glares at him.

 _“I’m trying to understand,”_ he says. So is Victor.

In a sense, Victor does have corroborating evidence. When he goes over the recordings of Superman before the doomsday crisis, there is a difference in his body language. A tension. Victor can see it especially in the tapes from the _Día de los Muertos_ fire, when all those people gather around him, and he tries to bear their grateful fervor with the stoicism they expect from a messiah… but he’s so tense, it’s obvious that it’s not genuine. His eyes dart from one person to the next, claustrophobic in the crowd. Misplaced farm boy.

He doesn’t seem to do that anymore. When Clark visited the cave the other day, every movement seemed controlled, deliberate. Smooth. Like everything he did and said, every breath, every motion of his eyes… all intentional. All conscious. Clark acts the way Victor’s other half wants to act, in a way. Something… without the flaws of human fear.

_“It’s like he’s… he’s just a little bit more divine.  I would chock it up to my imagination, or my personal bias, after everything I’ve been through with him. But I’ve looked at old photos, videos. It’s different. He’s different.”_

_“Do you think this difference is… dangerous?”_

_“No! No, not like that. If anything, it’s a good thing. Like he’s more comfortable in his own body.”_ Lois takes a deep breath, and touches the fingers of her left hand, where the ring would have been, if things had gone differently. _“I just… I think he should be encouraged to explore that part of himself. I think it’d be good for him.”_

Another taxi arrives in front of the lake house. She must have planned for this only to be a short visit.

Bruce leans back in the chair, thoughtful.  _“Why are you telling me this?”_ he asks.

_“Well, you’re the one he goes to for advice.”_

Bruce is suddenly overtaken by a coughing fit, and Victor is smiling in the cave alone. _“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,”_ Bruce chokes out. _“The last time he came to me for advice, I nearly killed him. I don’t think he’s likely to make the same mistake twice.”_

 _“Oh.”_ This seems to surprise Lois. _“I just thought, from what I discussed with Diana… nevermind.”_

_“What… what did you discuss with Diana?”_

_“She thinks Clark looks up to you. She thinks Clark cares what you think of him. So I thought maybe you could… I don’t know. Steer him in that direction?”_

_“Why didn’t you tell him yourself?”_

Lois winces, and leans back in her chair. _“I just broke his heart, didn’t I? I don’t think… I don’t think that’d be the best idea.”_ She sighs. _“It’s good that he’s gone to the island, too. Maybe that’ll help.”_

The two of them are silent for a while. Abruptly, Lois stands. _“I’m sorry, I need to go. My flight leaves in an hour, I only had a few minutes to stop by—”_

_“He’s very lucky to have you looking out for him, Lois.”_

She smiles, ducks her eyes. _“And you too, I hope,”_ she says.

 _“I’ll do my best,”_ Bruce promises.

They exchange goodbyes, and Bruce kisses her cheek, whispers something that Victor’s feeds don’t pick up, but nothing that causes any abrupt change in either of their body language.  Then Lois collects her jacket, and she shuts the door behind her, and goes to the taxi waiting outside.

Bruce stands in the foyer and watches the taxi leave.

Okay, Victor thinks to himself, to the other side of himself. Time for a quiz. You know Bruce very well, you’ve seen much of his behavior. What will Bruce do now?

Victor thinks the answer is very obvious, and he is amused when Bruce does exactly as he expected.

The elevator opens. Bruce enters the cave, claps Victor’s shoulder as he passes by, and then comes to stand in the back of the room, where there is a secret compartment built into the wall, lined with lead. Hidden from the team. Hidden from Alfred.

A two-ounce shard of Kryptonite.

Bruce doesn’t do anything with it; he doesn’t even open the wall to look at it. But he stands there, for a moment, and Victor watches him.

Victor wonders – is it that he wants to use the Kryptonite? Is it that he feels less safe than before Lois’ visit? Or is he standing there because he’s contemplating destroying the rock for good, definitively protecting Clark from Bruce’s own paranoia?

That’s far too advanced a question for Victor to pose to his other half. Maybe someday soon, though, he’ll be able to decipher it.


	6. May 25th - Alfred

In the morning, the plane takes off without issue, and the island fades into the sea.

Stowed under the console, strapped to the floor, is a wooden crate filled with straw. The crate holds two gifts for mankind, to be displayed anonymously in Diana’s collection at the Louvre: ancient painted pottery. Atop the crate sit two small scraps of parchment: one, a letter for Diana; the other, a chevon recipe one of the Amazonian chefs scribbled down for Alfred at the end of the feast last night.

 _“Where the hell have you been?”_ One of the console screens lights up with the face of Bruce on the satellite connection, looking terribly disheveled.

“I was under the impression I was meant to escort Mr. Kent to the island,” Alfred tells him, mildly. “Was I mistaken?”

_“No, that’s – but it’s been thirty-eight hours since you went out of radio range!”_

“Has it? I hadn’t realized.” He’d only been on the island for one night. “That is strange. Though, I suppose Ms. Prince did warn us about the fluid temporal status of her magical homeland.”

_“If you’d just dropped him off, it should have only been a few hours’ difference.”_

“Now, Master Bruce, there’s no harm in taking a brief island excursion, is there?”

For a moment, only the crown of Bruce’s head is visible in the feed, as the man covers his face and groans in frustration.

Alfred can’t help but smile a bit at this display. “Were you worried for me?” he asks, needling his charge.

Bruce gives him a flat look.

Alfred chuckles. “How charming.”

_“So, you were radio silent for over a day. Tell me you at least got good intel.”_

“You do recall the Amazons are your allies?”

_“Alfred, I’m really not in the mood for this argument.”_

“Fine, fine.” Alfred sets the autopilot and leans back in his chair. “I’ll tell you one thing: they treat their guests _exceptionally_ well.”

_“I thought men weren’t allowed on the island.”_

“Yes, and thanks for mentioning that ahead of time, by the way,” chides Alfred, but Bruce doesn’t even bother to look apologetic.  It isn’t really his fault – things had been busy, and Bruce had been far too preoccupied with his tense email exchanges with Clark to properly brief Alfred ahead of the trip. “That’s the funny thing, though. Queen Hippolyta knew to expect me, and she invited me personally to dinner.”

_“Why?”_

“Well, I asked Menalippe just that. Menalippe – she was my chaperone, lovely girl, very friendly. She happens to be the Queen’s sister. So, I asked her, what made the Queen decide to invite me on the island? She says _she_ did it.”

_“Menalippe did?”_

“Yes, exactly. Evidently, she’s very talented with divination. She’s some kind of priestess? At least she made a point to evangelize me while she had my attention; I’ve learned the proper way to throw perfectly good food into a fire. Anyhow, it seems she and the Queen had spied on me and your friend Superman in the plane.”

_“Just… with magic?”_

Alfred shrugs. “Something like that. Perhaps more to do with the ancient Greek Gods, I don’t know. In any case, Queen Hippolyta found she had something very important in common with us.”

_“And that was?”_

“None of your business, is what it was.” (The truth is that Queen Hippolyta had empathized with Alfred’s story, the feeling of watching his own child march ceaselessly into war, but Bruce doesn’t need to know this.)

 _“Alfred…”_ If the furrow of his eyebrows is any indication, Bruce’s patience is thinning.

“So I spent my time with Menalippe, the high priestess, while Mr. Kent was escorted by Penthesilea. She’s the quartermaster for the army.”

On the screen, Bruce pops the cap off of a pen with his teeth. _“Can you spell that for me?”_

Alfred tilts his head. “It’s in ancient Greek.”

Bruce drops the pen. _“Right. I’ll, uh. I’ll ask Diana later.”_

“Have you been sleeping?”

_“I’m fine. Go on, please.”_

Alfred takes a deep breath. “Penthesilea introduced Mr. Kent to the warriors, the armory, the dormitories and so on.”

_“Are they all warriors?”_

“No, actually. Seems like they’ve a full economy, merchants and farmers and artisans and politicians. But Mr. Kent and I mostly interacted with the army. They all seemed very friendly, and welcoming towards him. In fact, by sundown I think he forgot I was there.”

 _“That’s…”_ Bruce sighs. _“That’s good.”_

“Indeed. I believe I heard him telling a story about a rodeo.” Alfred studies Bruce’s expression in the feed. “What are you thinking now? I can tell you’re thinking something.”

_“Nothing. Just, I’m glad it’s done with. I think that this… this will be a good thing.”_

“As do I, Master Bruce.” Alfred smiles. “See you this evening.”


	7. Late Spring - Artemis

The quartermaster Penthesilea leads the Superman around the circle of tables like a honeybee, pollinating his introduction with each bud of Amazonian society present at the feast that evening. She has dressed him in a chiton from the military stores, and a himation overgarment so that he’d be presentable for the formal gathering. He looks a bit uncomfortable in the unfamiliar clothing, but he’s got enough courage to smile through it and greet everyone warmly.

“That pattern looks familiar,” remarks Philippus to Artemis. “It can’t be… is it _yours_?”

Artemis shrugs, mildly. “Penthesilea asked me for it this afternoon. She said she couldn’t find anything else that would fit such a tall, broad-shouldered individual, so he’ll just have to borrow from my wardrobe until she can purchase custom garments.”

Philippus makes a _tsk_ sound. “Those colors don’t look good on him. He’s too pale.”

Artemis smiles, slightly. She knows Philippus isn’t happy about the newcomer; that’s part of the reason she’s standing here with Philippus guarding the Queen, rather than taking part in the feast.

Artemis is also deliberately standing to the left of Philippus, physically interposing herself between Philippus and the second guest, Mr. Pennyworth, who is seated at Menalippe’s table. It’s not that Artemis actually believes Philippus will shirk direct orders and try to attack one of the two men, but she hopes that her presence by Philippus’ side will help the other warrior tamp down her intense resentment this evening.

The two of them are good friends. Philippus, head of the royal guard. Artemis, head of the army succeeding the loss of the great General Antiope. Once, many years ago, Artemis had caught Philippus trying to sneak into the guest house to slit Steve Trevor’s throat. The subsequent reprimands had probably straightened out Philippus’ behavior, but it was prudent to keep an eye on her.

Penthesilea comes near, with the Superman in tow. Philippus flinches, slinking back further into the shadows. “General Artemis,” says Penthesilea, “I’ve come to introduce your new recruit.”

His eyes widen at that. Artemis wonders how she appears to him, in the context of Diana’s reports from the world of mankind. Is he impressed by her stature, her physical presence? She is certainly larger and broader than the average of womankind. Or is he surprised at the darkness of her skin? The archivist and historian Mnemosyne had preemptively briefed the army on the peculiarities of man’s modern world – would it startle him to see that the General of the Amazonian army is a black-skinned woman?

He smiles bashfully, and scratches the back of his neck, murmuring to Penthesilea with a flushed face, “You didn’t tell me I was borrowing clothes from the _General!_ ”

It’s charming enough to pull a smile onto Artemis’ face, and she takes his forearm to shake in greeting. “Welcome to Themyscira,” she tells him. “I believe our fashion suits you better than that of man’s world.”

He blushes further. “Do you think so? I was… I was worried I looked out of place.”

“You do,” interjects Philippus testily, from a few meters away.

Artemis laughs, and tries to cover for Philippus’ animosity. “You look entirely out of place, but not for long. By the end of summer, we’ll make an Amazon of you.”

The gratitude on his face is terribly familiar. Like so many years ago, when a young princess lost her sparring match. Artemis had promised her to train her so well that eventually she would best even General Antiope.

That was a long time ago.

“If you’ll excuse us,” says Penthesilea, politely. She leads the man away to make the next crucial connection, and Artemis and Philippus are left slightly outside the glow of the bonfire once more.

“You have no idea how he fights, Artemis,” mutters Philippus, “why would you promise him success?”

“He’s not an Athenian,” Artemis murmurs in return, placatingly. “He’s not even related to the Athenians. He’s not from the same _species_ as the Athenians. You know this, Philippus.”

Philippus’ frown deepens, the lines starker in the shadows of the fire. “He was still raised with them. Mnemosyne says mankind is still full of murderers and rapists.”

“And you think one man can take down the entire Amazonian army?”

The other woman growls. “I am only saying we cannot _trust_ him. We know what men do with our trust. Promise me, Artemis, that you will not disarm yourself when he is near. Promise me.”

Artemis takes a deep breath. “I know your concern and I’ve considered it myself for a long while, ever since the possibility of his visit was first suggested.  I know to keep my wits about me, Philippus. In any case, it isn’t the place of the General to concern herself with the friendship of a single recruit. I plan to keep my professional distance, and I will not disarm myself.”

Philippus visibly relaxes at this.

“But, Philippus,” Artemis adds, “please keep in mind… I will not disarm myself around _you_ , either.”

 

“General Artemis,” says Epione, “please tell me you did not _break_ our guest on his first day?”

Clark is even paler in the dim candlelight of the infirmary, a sheen of sweat over his brow. Still, his mood is pleasant and self-deprecating, and he winces helplessly as Artemis pushes him to sit on the available cot to be examined. “I don’t think I made it far enough into training to _be_ broken,” he admits to Epione.

Artemis still feels… entirely bemused by the whole experience. “He fainted,” is all she can say to Epione, “he saw his own blood and he fainted.”

Like a startled goat. Like a newborn colt. Like a little, vulnerable thing. Artemis is starting to question whether this man is even cut out for training in the first place, and she’s looking to Epione in the hopes that the healer will just be able to… fix him? Fix him into something that Artemis can _teach._

“I’m really fine, now,” says Clark, “I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“Now, hold on,” says Epione, pulling a stool out to sit in front of Clark and examine the cut on his shoulder, the drying blood. “Clearly it’s something that has the General worried, and she has good instincts about this sort of thing.”

 _You think I brought him here because he’s sick?_ Artemis wants to say, _I brought him here because he’s weak and I don’t know what to do about it._

But Epione has been blessed with better bedside manner than Artemis. She looks at the nervous young man and asks, “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened, and we can figure it out together?”

He looks to Artemis and then to Epione again. “I, um,” he says, “I was sparring with Mala.”

Epione snorts. “There is your first mistake.” She looks at Artemis with an eyebrow raised in accusation. After all, Mala does have a reputation for being particularly violent and enthusiastic.

Artemis defends herself, “It was Lieutenant Euboea who chose Mala to spar with him.”

“I think the Lieutenant just likes to ensure I don’t become bored,” says Epione sweetly. She takes a washcloth to clean the wound – at least Clark doesn’t wince. “So, I take it Mala drew first blood?” Epione infers.

“It’s just…” Clark says, looking at the floor. “You have to understand, in… in man’s world, it’s almost impossible for me to be injured.”

“Because you’re… a good fighter, by their lights?” Artemis asks, skeptically.

He looks at her with a shocked expression. “No, it’s because I’m… did you not know that I’m Kryptonian? I’m an alien?”

“Of course I know that,” Artemis says defensively, “but what does that have to do with being injured? Do you have different abilities?”

“Yes, I… oh my God.” He sits up straight to face both women fully, counting off with his fingers, “My skin is impenetrable, I’m stronger than anything else on the planet, I can fly, I can shoot lasers out of my eyes… I thought you knew all of this?!”

He looks equal parts alarmed and delighted at the revelation. There’s maybe an ounce of boyish pride mixed into what is primarily amusement at the misunderstanding. It looks especially out of place, considering how sick he still looks.

Epione looks at Artemis, and Artemis shrugs.

Clark asks, “Why did you agree to train me, if not because you knew the role I played in the rest of the world?”

“As a favor to Princess Diana, of course.”

She sees the realization alight in his face. Like he finally understands and respects the magnitude of their loyalty. This is a good lesson to him.

 

Epione asks if anything else has made him feel sick before, and he goes on to explain something about a glowing green rock. His demeanor changes, becoming more somber as he recounts the tale of when a man forged weapons with the green mineral and tried to kill him. Neither Artemis nor Epione make a comment about this, but Artemis can hear Philippus’ derisive huff in her mind. _Of course a man would do such a thing._

“General Artemis,” says Epione quietly, “I would usually forbid such a thing in the infirmary, but under these special circumstances… would you please unsheathe your sword?”

Artemis does so. Clark watches with an awe that reminds Artemis again of the young princess, of her fascination at seeing a well-crafted blade for the first time. Artemis is careful to hold it sideways, like a tool and not a weapon. The weight of it feels wrong in this room.

Epione asks Clark, “Does this make you feel the same way you felt near the green rock?”

Clark considers this for a moment. He holds out his hand as if he was feeling for the warmth of a fire. Then he shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t. But… now that I think about it, neither did Diana’s, and yet she was able to cut the Kryptonian monster.”

“Amazonian swords were blessed by Hephaestus,” Artemis suggests. “Maybe that is what allows them to cut your skin.”

“If that is the case, then why did he faint?” asks Epione.

Clark clears his throat, uncomfortably. “That may have been… psychosomatic.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and he’s looking at his hands. “It’s just… the last time I saw my own blood. I was very… afraid. And then I was killed… I think it just… it just disturbed me, this time.  I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

Artemis sheathes the sword, watching him carefully.

He bites his lip. Then, “Did you know I was dead? Diana and the others… brought me back to life, very recently. That’s actually why they sent me here. So that I wouldn’t…” he smiles mirthlessly, “so that I wouldn’t die again.”

Artemis nods slowly. Clearly, he is upset, and she places a hand on his shoulder. “It seems there are many things we don’t yet know about you, Clark. I think I will set aside time this evening, and we will have you introduce yourself more thoroughly to the army, so we are all briefed on the matter.”

“In the meanwhile,” adds Epione, sincerely, “I want you to know that you can come here to the infirmary if you ever need anything.” She glances to Artemis with a grin, and she says, “I know that the warriors can be very rough with each other, but not all of us are like them. You know where to find me, if you need a kind ear. Or stitches.”

 

He explains himself that evening, to a limited degree. He stands at the front of the mess hall and he explains his powers, and the true nature of his reputation in man’s world, what it means to be called “Superman.”

He talks about how he saves people from natural disasters, or burning buildings, or guns, or bombs… how he intervenes when their airplanes fall out of the sky, or when their boats threaten to sink to the ocean floor. The other warriors seem… amused, for most of it. But as he begins describing how mankind treats him, how the concept of “Superman” is worshipped and how uncomfortable that makes him, they begin taking him more seriously. Especially Mala.

Mala is the shortest of the warriors, with black hair and pallid skin and shadows under her eyes. She stands at the other end of the hall, and despite her smaller stature she seems to take up just as much space as the man across from her. “So, your goal here,” she clarifies, “is to become the ultimate Savior? To defend those who cannot defend themselves?”

He looks at her, his expression open. “Yes,” he says, “I think so.”

Mala nods, solemnly. She’s always looked a bit sickly, Artemis thinks, but her body’s structure has never stopped her from being one of the most dedicated, motivated soldiers Artemis has ever worked with. That ferocity comes through, when she says, “I swear to you, in the name of Zeus, that I will do everything in my power to help you achieve that goal.”

The mess goes entirely silent. It isn’t the first time they’ve heard such conviction from Mala, but no one expected her to ally herself with Clark, of all people.

“Thank you,” he says.

 

Much time passes. When he first arrived on the island, there used to be a pause, a hesitation before Artemis could recall or verbalize his name. Now there isn’t. He’s just Clark, that’s Clark, keep an eye on Clark.

Lieutenant Euboea proceeds with training him. With hours upon hours of repetition, he comes to understand the weight of the sword in his hand, and how to predict the movements of his opponents. When he isn’t practicing the sword with Euboea, he is learning unarmed combat from Venelia, who coaches wrestling at the gymnasium further into the city.

When spring turns into early summer, Philippus comes to visit Artemis in the late evening after the mess has been cleared and most of the warriors have retired to the barracks. Artemis is still awake and reading by candlelight the books that Diana had sent along with Clark – modern histories, texts about atomic bombs and mutually assured destruction.

“General,” says Philippus in greeting, hesitating in the doorway to the mess.

Artemis takes a deep breath, and shuts the gruesome tome. “Philippus,” she says, “is there something you need?”

There is something eerie in the silence, and some niggling part of Artemis’ mind is telling her to reach for her sword. She deliberately chooses not to heed it.

Philippus slinks into the room. Another quick glance to confirm that they are alone, and then Philippus’ sweet lips press against the corner of Artemis’ mouth. Artemis hums pleasure into the kiss, and they take a moment to themselves, with eyes shut and soft touches.

Finally, Philippus pulls away, a small smile gracing her face. Artemis whispers, “Really, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Word reached the Queen of a beast attacking the livestock penned at the edge of the city. She thinks it’d be a good task for your… you know. Him.”

Artemis levels a knowing gaze at Philippus. “And the Queen’s message included the kiss?”

Philippus shrugs, her eyes hooded. “You looked so serious; I could not help myself.” Then, while leaving the room, she adds sweetly, “Goodnight, Artemis. Sleep well.”

Artemis watches her leave. “Goodnight, Philippus.”

 

Before dawn, Artemis moves silently into the barracks, to the room shared by Clark and the seven other members of his unit. She opens the door – the dim light from the lamps in the hallway is sufficient to make out the forms of the beds. He is asleep near the window, under the light of the moon. He sleeps on his side, his knees tucked up.

She kneels next to him and finds his shoulder, wrapped in wool blankets, and she touches him gently so as not to startle him. Still, he flinches, and faster than should be possible, he’s sitting up with his back against the wall, the blankets pulled up like a shield, wide eyes unfocused. “You’re alright,” Artemis soothes in a whisper, “it’s only me.”

He rubs his bleary eyes with the heel of one hand, and his posture relaxes. “…General?”

“I have a task for you, a special excursion,” Artemis tells him. “Go put on your armor. Be careful not to wake anyone.”

“Can I come?” The whisper comes from behind Artemis, on a different bedroll. Mala is sitting up, alert, the moon glinting in her eyes.

For a moment, Artemis weighs the question. She’d prefer to have the time alone with her trainee, but she also considers how Mala would feel at the rejection. Mala’s life has been… so difficult, lately, and Artemis would prefer not to add to her troubles. “Alright,” Artemis relents, “but be quick about it, both of you. You’ll need your bows.”

They meet Artemis at the stables when they are dressed and armed. The three of them mount their horses, and Artemis leads them along the well-trodden path to the city, and then around the perimeter of the city gates. Not a word is said, which is a relief to Artemis.

As Artemis understands it (though she is often too busy to observe it herself), Mala and Clark are usually very talkative with each other, especially while they are sparring, trading half-sentences between blows of the sword. When Lieutenant Euboea updates Artemis on Clark’s development, Mala is often mentioned as someone who is taking special care to help with Clark’s training, to teach him everything she knows. “She sort of interrogates him,” explained Euboea, “about all sorts of things. She wants to know everything about him.”

Artemis doubts the special attention is entirely reciprocated. Mala is very persistent, and Clark seems the type to be overly patient with that sort of person. Hopefully, overall, Mala is more of a help than a hindrance. This excursion will at least give Artemis a sense of whether the two work well together, and especially whether Mala is able to back off from a fight and allow Clark to take the lead in this learning experience that was explicitly intended for him.

The sun is beginning to rise, when they reach outskirts on the far side of the city, where there is mostly farmland. Artemis slows her horse when they near the farmhouse, and the other two follow suit. A young woman is already awake and dressed, feeding a stable of chickens. She waves in greeting, and Artemis dismounts.

“Oenone,” Artemis greets her. “We were told of some kind of monster?”

“It is good to see you, General,” says Oenone warmly, and she shifts the bag of grain to her left arm so she can grasp Artemis’ forearm with her right. “One of my farmhands sent word to Queen Hippolyta yesterday, but I didn’t expect such a… formidable response. I’m afraid the creature might not warrant the attention of a soldier of your experience.”

“That’s quite alright, Oenone. I was hoping to let my trainees handle the beast.” Artemis steps to the side to gesture towards them. “You already know Mala, and this other soldier is the friend of Diana.”

“Oh,” says Oenone, enthusiastically, “your name was Clark, wasn’t it? It’s so nice to meet you; I’m sure you’ll make quick work of this.”

“You farm this land?” Clark asks.

Oenone beams with pride. “That’s right. There are only about fifty of us, and we keep the whole of Themyscira fed well.”

“I grew up on farms. I couldn’t help but notice… none of your fields are fallow. Won’t that weaken next year’s yield?”

Oenone tilts her head. “I’m not sure what you mean. Perhaps things are different in man’s world, but on Themyscira the harvest is always bountiful, thanks to Demeter’s blessing.”

He nods slowly. “Demeter. Right.”

Mala smirks up at him. “I didn’t know you grew up on a farm,” she says. The two of them fall into idle chatter, and Oenone explains to Artemis the last known location of the beast.

 

An unnaturally greenish-white male lion, with the hind legs of a wild boar, and teeth like the teeth of a comb. It isn’t hard to track it down – aside from its unique set of footprints, the thing makes a resounding _thump_ with every step, like it doesn’t know how to walk properly. Like it was never supposed to be able to walk properly. Its eyes are bloodshot, and its maw leaks drool onto the banks of the river. In the brush, out of earshot, Artemis and her soldiers stalk the beast.

“No one ever told you why Themyscira needs a standing army, did they?” Mala whispers to Clark, watching him. Clark shakes his head.

“Focus, Mala,” Artemis chastises.

Artemis has never seen a beast like this before, but based on its build she’s reasonably confident that a well-paced arrow could pierce its flank. She doesn’t want to set Clark up to fail his first task – she wants to make sure it’s _possible_ to succeed before passing control to the untested boy.

“It’s our penance from the gods,” whispers Mala. “For disobeying Aphrodite. We’re made to stay on the island and guard the gate to the underworld, eternally. It’s a big job. Lots of times, creatures like this wander out of the gate, and we have to take care of it.”

“When did you disobey Aphrodite?” Clark asks under his breath.

“Long story. You’d probably do better to wait for midsummer festival – they retell it then,” Mala explains.

“Hush,” says Artemis. “Both of you.”

The beast lumbers towards the river, its front paws sinking deep into the muck of the bank. It drinks. Its mouth is gruesomely scarred and doesn’t fully close, so much of the water simply passes through its lips.

“Clark,” Artemis whispers, finally. “You’ve practiced your archery; you know the weak points of a quadruped. It’s up to you, now.” She backs away from the brush to let him get closer.

He looks alarmed. “What?”

“Take the shot, Clark. Kill it.”

“Why?”

Artemis balks at him. “Why? Because it’s a monster. It’s dangerous. It’s your job as an Amazon to protect the world from anything that comes through the gate.”

He looks at the beast, thoughtfully. “He’s not doing anything bad. He’s just drinking.”

“It could end up preying on the farmlands,” Artemis retorts.

“Oenone just said that supply far outweighs demand.”

This is supposed to be a teaching experience, isn’t it? Artemis looks Clark over. He looks just like the other Amazons, he looks like he belongs here, and he belongs in the armor he’s wearing. “Clark,” she says, “as your General, I’m entrusting this situation to your judgement. Kill it, don’t kill it… I’ll leave the decision up to you. But just know that this beast is your responsibility, and if there are negative consequences for your choice, you will shoulder the blame. Do you understand?”

He nods. He understands.

 

So, Clark decides not to kill the beast.

Moments later, he stands up and tries to _befriend_ the beast, which results in the beast attacking with ravenous, slobbery frenzy. Clark is quite surprised when the beast’s claws draw blood, and if not for Mala’s quick thinking in throwing her sword at the gaping maw, Clark’s head may have parted ways with his shoulders. “It’s a magical creature _you idiot!”_ shouts Mala, and Artemis tugs Clark into cover.

After that, they make quick work of the thing. By the time the sun has almost reached its peak, they are tugging the broad, heavy corpse out of the woods and back towards the farms.

Clark is flustered. “I guess I failed your test,” he says.

For a moment, Artemis says nothing. She lets him feel uneasy, because he really ought to think over what just happened, and why his idealism nearly got him killed. But she’s not angry with him. “I think we learned something, didn’t we? As long as you use this experience to learn more about yourself and the nature of war, then I am satisfied.”

“I feel bad for him,” says Clark. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Few beasts do,” responds Artemis.

“Do you regret your choice?” asks Mala.

Clark looks over his shoulder at the corpse, studying the way the lion’s green-white head drags against the ground, lifelessly. “I regret that it killed him.”


	8. July 1st - Diana

It isn’t clear when, precisely, the Amazons lost contact with mankind.  The cultural memory is firm on the matter; the Amazons freed themselves from bondage and took their ships to the sea in search of a new promised land. But dating that event in the context of world history is almost impossible. The memories of the women who lived through those events can be vague and contradictory. Diana was born long after the schism, so she relies on cultural artifacts.  Looking only at the style of the armor of the warriors, Diana would say that the Amazons broke off from mankind in the late Hellenistic period during the emergence of the Roman Empire. But this contradicts the materials available in the Amazonian library, which date no later than 450 BCE.

The Amazons never had Plato or Aristotle. Whether the conspicuous absence of late Classical/early Hellenistic writings was because of the timing of the schism or out of a personal resentment, Diana will never truly know.

“What are you reading?” asks Bruce. He shuts the sliding glass door behind him, and joins Diana on the porch of the lake house. She has been sitting under the overcast sky in the comfortable lounge chair for the last few hours, listening to the sounds of the cicadas and the chirps of birds echoing against the still water.

She lifts the cover of her paperback so Bruce can view it, and he squints to read it. Old man.

“The Symposium?” he asks. “Isn’t that one about men who have sex with young boys?”

She sits up in the lounge chair, and she moves the leg rest over towards Bruce to serve as a stool for him to join her; he sits gingerly, still nursing the bruises from their sparring session.  “It’s more complicated than that,” Diana explains away the look of mild disgust on his face. “The practice of pederasty in Ancient Greece was tied in with political networking, mentorship, coming-of-age… I do find myself surrounded by men and boys these days. I thought I might get some advice from the foremost text on the matter.”

He studies her face. “I don’t…” he begins, “I don’t think that’s the best choice of text… for that purpose…”

“You don’t think young Barry Allen could be motivated with a sexual reward?”

He stares at her, bewildered. “I don’t think…” he begins, then she breaks into a smile. “Oh. You’re joking.”

“Just a little bit.” She loves that he’s so easy to read, so easy to rile up. “Though I do imagine that Barry would have benefitted from that sort of system.”

Bruce clears his throat, turning his wide eyes to the lake. “Why would you say that?”

She shrugs, and opens the book again as if to read. “We do lunch, sometimes. He’s shown me his online dating profile.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Bruce groans, shutting his eyes and turning his face to the overcast sky as if to bleach it from his memory.

A moment passes. Diana reads more of the drunk reveler Alcibiades stumbling into the banquet, only to discover his crush, Agathon, reclining on the same couch as his sometimes-lover, Socrates. The exchange is charming, and flirtatious, and quick.

“Are the Amazons more open about sexuality?” Bruce asks, then. “Please don’t tell me I sent Kansas to an island full of exhibitionists.”

Diana considers this. “Themyscira, as a whole, has similar norms to those of mankind. No one is going mad with lust. But, Bruce, you must understand… the Amazons are _immortal._ There is no shame, the way there is in the world of men. We have no need for shame.” She shifts in her seat, crossing her legs the other direction. “Shame only holds us back.”

Bruce leans forward, with humor in his eyes, and purrs, “Is that an invitation, Princess?”

She laughs, and gives him an exaggerated once-over with her gaze. She knows he is only bantering with her. “You know,” she says, “under different circumstances, I may have said yes.”

“But?” he prompts, pseudo-flirtatious, “What could possibly be stopping you? Surely not shame.”

She opens her book again to playfully dismiss him. “I just think it wouldn’t be right,” she says, truthfully, “since you are so hopelessly in love with Superman.”

Like a cartoon character belatedly noticing they’ve stepped off the cliff, Bruce’s face falls into abject horror.

 

Once you know his secrets, Bruce Wayne isn’t very hard to figure out.  Diana feels she understands him, on a fundamental level, the same way she would understand an artifact of the ancient world. If she were an Aristotelian, she could codify her understanding of Bruce according to four causes, the way Aristotle would have.

His material cause would be the blood and sinew, the sweat and adrenaline, the lungs and the stomach. The actual materials out of which his body was constructed. His efficient cause would be the late Dr. Thomas and Martha Wayne, the agents whose actions directly instantiated Bruce. His formal cause – that is, the model inspired by which the shape of Bruce’s body was formed – would be the body of Zeus, in whose image every human was made. And his final cause… his purpose, his function, his intended end… would be Batman, to be the Batman. To protect the weak, and defend the innocent.

 But Diana is not an Aristotelian, and Bruce is not an artifact to be labeled and taxonomized. Rather, she feels her connection with the man is something beyond the simple matter of _knowing_ him. It’s more like knowing him _and_ knowing what he will be. She anticipates his decisions before he makes them. She anticipates his words before he speaks. Never so often does she feel like a demigod as she does in Bruce Wayne’s presence, and perhaps that’s only because of how predictably human he is.

She doesn’t feel this way about other people.

Maybe Bruce is particularly honest around her.

 

What happens next is entirely predictable. He opens his mouth as if to speak once, twice, and then he shuts his mouth. He stands. He opens the sliding door, enters the house, and closes the door shut, as if to end the conversation. All the while, the expression on his face is carefully blank, probably because he doesn’t know what he’s feeling in the first place in order to express it. Betrayed? Offended? Terrified?

She turns the page, and she has the opportunity to read Alcibiades’ praises of Socrates: _“When we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, he produces absolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within hearing of them. And if I were not afraid that you would think me hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence which they have always had and still have over me. For my heart leaps within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain tears when I hear them.”_

And then, of course, Bruce returns. Given the time to compose himself and organize his thoughts, he returns to her, to correct the record, to inform her that she has somehow misunderstood. She prepares to listen to him deny that even a single impure thought of Superman had ever crossed his mind (which, she knows, is patently untrue: it’s written there right on his face.)

Bruce stands above her, there on the porch above the lake, and he says, “It’s not love.”

She smiles, with an air of long-suffering patience.

Then he says, “I admit… that it’s something. I don’t know… what it is. But it’s not love.”

She studies him – his jaw tense, his chin held high, staring at a spot far above her head. “Oh,” she says, finally, “I’m surprised that you would admit to it at all.”

“It isn’t very kind of you to toy with me, like that,” he says, carefully, still not meeting her gaze, still standing uncomfortably upright. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

She feels properly chastised, and she dog-ears the book and sets it down.  She stands and touches Bruce’s shoulder to invite him to sit once more, and she murmurs an apology. A gentle stroke of his graying hair. “The others give you enough trouble as it is; I shouldn’t tease you.”

His lined face tenses with worry. “Do the others think I’m in _love_ with him? How could anyone think I’m – I tried to _murder_ him.”

She shakes her head, helplessly, to soothe him. “I don’t think the others know what to think.”

“It isn’t love,” he says, his fists white, “it’s _terror,_ it’s utter terror, every moment in his presence I’m… useless, paralyzed.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you look at that, and you see a schoolboy crush?”

“Bruce…”

“No, _please,_ Diana, explain it to me, because,” his voice becomes harsher, “I really can’t wrap my mind around that.”

“Why are you so defensive?”

The words come out like a dam bursting, “Because I don’t know what’s _happening_ to me!” His fingers knot in his hair, his voice nearing hysteria, “I sent _Alfred_ on the plane because I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him! And we – we _resurrected_ him with the mysterious alien technology that, that _we_ don’t know _anything_ about, on blind _faith_ that it would work, damn the consequences…”

“It _did_ work, Bruce.”

“These are not rational decisions. These are not the decisions of a rational man.” He screws his eyes shut. “I’ve lived my life under the assumption that there is no higher power, there is no natural justice. The world doesn’t make sense unless you force it to. Three years ago, God appeared in our universe, and nothing… nothing since has made any damn sense. Am I supposed to pray? Am I supposed to… to just… prostrate myself before him for… judgement? He’s not even… _Science_ can explain this, you know, he’s an _Alien._ Why doesn’t it feel that way? I don’t… I don’t know how to make sense of life when my mortality, and everyone else’s, has been thrown into such… stark fucking relief.”

She hadn’t predicted this reaction, this outpouring of emotion… but his alarm doesn’t reach her in empathy; only sympathy. She takes his shaking hands, and she holds them still, warm with her palms. “Breathe, Bruce,” she says.

He does, even though it rattles inside of him. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice lower, “I need to compose myself.”

“That’s quite alright,” she tells him, and she strokes the back of his hand with her thumb. “Listen to me, let me tell you something.”

He nods with his eyes still shut, and she leads him to tuck his face against her shoulder, and let her support him. “Alright,” he says.

“Steve Trevor never knew me as anything else but an Amazon. In his eyes, I was the woman who saved his life many times over, the woman who could stop a bullet. We were never equal. We made jokes together, we covered each other’s weaknesses, and we cared for one another very deeply. But the kind of love that was encouraged by mankind, the equalizing love between two mortals… that was never going to be an option for us. The things that he loved about me as a person could never be disentangled from the things that he loved about me as an idea, as a goddess.”

Bruce frowns. “It’s wrong to call that kind of thing love,” he says. “To love the idea of a person and not the person themselves. It’s dishonest. It’s ugly.”

She mulls over that. “I imagine,” she says, “that your thoughts turn towards the people who proclaim their love for Bruce Wayne?”

“I’ve seen it lots of times,” he says. “They become very brutal about it, about demanding the affection they think they are due, in return for their loyalty to the idea of Wayne. That sort of thing could have really hurt a man more sensitive than I was at the time.”

Diana shakes her head, stroking a hand down his back. “The difference here,” she explains, “is that the persona ‘Bruce Wayne’ is a lie. They were worshipping a lie. But…” She pushes him away, so she can take his face in her hands, and gaze into his eyes. “My _power_ is not a lie, Bruce. My _immortality_ is not a lie. I _can_ stop a bullet. I am more than human. I am a daughter of Zeus – this is a part of me, just like Diana Prince is a part of me. So when Steve Trevor fell in love with me the way a man falls in love with a god, I was not offended.”

He shakes his head in denial, helplessly. “That’s different. I spent all that time thinking of Superman as a God – I nearly killed him for it. But he _wasn’t_ , he was just, some boy, with a mother and a father, and... Why can’t I see him as a person? Why can’t I treat the man with the respect he deserves? Why do I look at him and…” he snarls, “It’s shameful. Inexcusable. Selfish and self-indulgent. To treat him like an idea, and not a person.”

“ _No_ , Bruce,” Diana tells him, “he’s _both.”_

“Diana…”

“Ever since he was brought back to life, don’t you see it? He is changing. He is metamorphosing. He is becoming something more than just a man.”

Bruce can’t look at her. “He doesn’t deserve this,” he says, “he shouldn’t have to, to change, to give up his life…”

“It is a _good,_ Bruce. It is _right_ for him. He is getting to know himself, become himself. And, what better way to do it?” She cups his cheek again, so gently, smoothing away the tension. “Don’t you see, Bruce? He has the guidance of the Amazons, the support of the Justice League, and… the steadfast love and loyalty of Bruce Wayne.”

That’s when he’s finally had enough. He pushes himself out of her arms, and he stands and he looks at her, as if he’s about to say something. But he doesn’t say anything, and then he retreats back into the lake house, leaving her alone with her book.


	9. Mala

A knife has a function. The craftsman creates a knife to be sharp, to cut things. If you found a knife abandoned somewhere in the wilderness, and you had no knowledge of the craftsman or their intentions for the knife, you could still look at the knife and intuit: _this is for cutting things._

Mala, too, was born with a function. You might think, _no, a person is an agent! They are born, not created by some craftsman. A person cannot have a function_. But Amazons are not born, not in that way. Amazons were sculpted from clay, fully formed by Aphrodite’s hand.

In that ancient time, mankind had become too powerful, too warlike, and the power that Ares held over mankind had made Aphrodite angry. She created the Amazons – not out of the chaos of birth, but with the careful and delicate hands of an artist. Aphrodite had a clear function in mind for the Amazons: to be a check on the power of mankind. Out of clay, the goddess sculpted a Queen to lead them, and she blessed the Queen with a magic token: a golden belt to wear around her chiton. As long as the Queen wore that blessed cord around her waist, the Amazons would be unstoppable.

Aphrodite had likewise sculpted Mala with a function – to be the chambermaid to Queen Hippolyta.

Mala fulfilled her function for much of her early life. It was a position of great honor. Queen Hippolyta relied on Mala to keep the bedrooms clean and the inkwells full, the armor polished and the lamps alight. Mala loved to be relied upon. To be a soldier was the furthest thing from her mind – she only wanted to be _Mala,_ just as the goddess had intended. She never saw war, nor suffering.

Everything changed with the invasion of the Athenians. The men claimed that they felt offended by the Amazons’ power and pride, so they charged into the Amazons’ territory to put them in their place. The two armies clashed for many days. Mala felt helpless, cooped up in the Queen’s quarters while the warriors did battle below. It wasn’t the first time the Amazonian army was called to fight, but it was the first time that fighting took place on Amazon land, where Mala could witness it firsthand.

Finally, Heracles (the leader of the Athenians) fell to his knees, admitting defeat. “How could I ever best you in battle?” he gasped “You are blessed by the gods.” He asked that they share a prayer to the gods, to beg forgiveness for the Athenians’ transgression. The Queen was moved by his humility, and consented.

Heracles asked that she doff her golden belt, so that he may better appreciate the blessed artifact up close. The Queen believed in his goodwill. She trusted him, and she wanted to share with him, with all mankind, the blessings of the gods.

Queen Hippolyta removed her belt. Heracles smiled with sharp teeth, and he drew his sword.

Mala watched from the balcony as steel met steel, as Amazons fell to Athenian blades, and she could do nothing. Athenians invaded the city, trampling the bodies of her fallen sisters, and she could do nothing. She stood in the Queen’s chambers as Athenian soldiers tore through the door, and she could do nothing.

The fact that Mala was one of the many Amazons not trained for war had never been an issue before. The Amazonian army was the strongest army in the world, and it was not difficult for them to protect their sisters from harm, especially with the guarantee of the golden belt. If not for the deceit and trickery of the Athenians, Mala would never have experienced harm. She didn’t understand what was happening when the Athenian men bound her in chains and led her to the foreign ships with the rest of her imprisoned sisters.

She had never known suffering until then. She had never known any reason for war until the Athenians raped her, beat her, and taunted her with curses against her goddess.

 

She had been weeping openly, in the cargo hold of the Athenian ship, in the dark and the cold, the wood groaning against the waves. Mala was surrounded by other Amazons in chains, but she recognized none of them from her time caring for the Queen.

“What is her name?” asked one woman of another.

“She’s the Queen’s girl, Mala.”

But Mala couldn’t meet their eyes, and she cried and cried. She felt sore between her legs. _I will never see Queen Hippolyta again,_ she thought, _I don’t even know if Queen Hippolyta is still alive…! Everyone could be dead, or worse…_

Mala had done nothing to stop it.

“Mala,” one of the other captives whispered, “Mala, please don’t cry.”

She couldn’t stop; her breaths too quick, her panic like a stampede in her chest.

Then – the shifting of bodies, and the press of leather armor against Mala’s side. _A warrior,_ Mala’s mind supplied. _Someone braver than I was._ “Mala,” the soldier whispered, “my hands are tied; I cannot touch you. Please look at me.”

Mala’s sight was wobbly and bleary, but she tried to look through her tears. This woman, the warrior, was still clad in her armor, still wearing her helmet, and she was gazing directly at Mala, sitting so close their breaths could mingle. Her eyes were intense, focused. Mala sniffled, then choked out, “Who are you?”

“I am called Aëlla,” the warrior whispered to Mala. “I serve General Antiope.”

A fresh wave of tears. _The Queen’s sister must also be dead. Everyone who I failed to protect; dead._

“Mala,” said Aëlla again, “Malika, please, look at me. I promise you, we will save you. I will do everything in my power to protect you.”

 

Aëlla led the revolt against their Athenian captors.

One moment, the Amazons were captives bound in chains; the next, Aëlla was ripping apart the steel chains with a glow of blessing about her, something holy and immortal allowing her the strength to free herself.

Others did the same on the other ships. Mala was freed from her chains. She didn’t understand it; she couldn’t stop staring at Aëlla, watching this almost-stranger bend steel.

On the deck of the Athenian ship Mala stood with her sisters, barefoot and wearing only torn, sea-soaked clothing. The sun was setting. There was blood in the water. The only thing keeping Mala upright was the warm weight of Aëlla’s hand on her shoulder. “Don’t shiver, Mala,” Aëlla whispered as the evening wind picked up, “you are safe now.”

There were seven ships gathered in the water with liberated Amazons on their decks, but there were two other Athenian ships on the horizon, sailing away.

 “Were there prisoners on the other two ships?” asked Queen Hippolyta. Her extravagant, royal himation was bloody and ripped. In her hands she held the torn remains of the magic belt. Nonetheless, her voice carried to all who listened.

Antiope glanced to Lieutenant Artemis, who conferred with the Captains and then shook her head. “No,” Antiope answered the Queen, “everyone who was not killed in battle is accounted for here.”

“Then I am satisfied,” declared Queen Hippolyta.

Hushed whispers spread among the warriors. Mala’s fingers closed into a fist, of their own accord. General Antiope held up a hand to halt the dissent from her subordinates. Then she said, “My Queen, we cannot simply let them go.”

Queen Hippolyta took a deep breath. “I begged the goddess for our freedom. She gave it on the condition that we do not seek revenge against the Athenians.” Somewhere behind the Queen, the high priestess Menalippe was nodding solemnly. Aëlla’s grip on Mala’s shoulder was firm.

“ _No!”_ a woman screamed from the crowd, her rage held back only by her fellow warriors holding her in place. “My sister is dead! My sister is _dead!_ You cannot let her killer go free!”

More whispering from the army.

The Queen tried to explain, “The goddess said—”

“ _Murderers!”_ the woman cried out.

“A referendum!” shouted Captain Philippus.

The Queen consented to the referendum.

On one side: all those who prized loyalty to the goddess over loyalty to the General voted against seeking retribution. On the other side: all those who prized loyalty to the General over loyalty to the goddess voted in favor of seeking retribution.

Mala, with the majority, voted for retribution.

 

Days passed at sea. The Amazons were not seafaring people, but they made do chasing the two remaining ships with their prayers and the memories of their fallen sisters in their hearts.  After a storm, they found the ships beached on an island the Amazons had never seen before. This island was on no maps. This island had no inhabitants but the newly stranded Athenians, who are slaughtered within hours.

When night fell, the Amazons gathered on the shore. They built a huge pyre, and respectfully disposed of the bodies of their enemies. In the light of the flames, the high priestess Menalippe suddenly screamed, and collapsed.

The ocean water, which had previously been forming waves against the beach, went utterly still, like a lake. The flames also dissipated, the heat quieting down to embers. Where Menalippe had been, there was now a bright light, and then a glowing apparition of a beautiful woman towering over ten feet tall, dressed in sea foam.

 _You disobeyed me,_ said the goddess.

The Amazons knelt; Mala trembled, pressing her forehead against the sand.

_You were foolish to trust mankind, but your foolishness turned to arrogance when you sought revenge._

Mala knew that objections were burning in the throats of many of the soldiers, but none of them dared speak out against the goddess. Even the Queen and the General had prostrated themselves.

Beside Mala in the sand, Aëlla stirred. She reached out for Mala’s hand, and their fingers tangled in the preternatural glow of the goddess. Mala’s whole body trembled.

Aëlla lifted her head. “Divine Aphrodite,” Aëlla breathed, “may I ask a question?”

The goddess’ eyes flashed, and for a moment Mala was terrified that they would need to put Aëlla on the pyre as well. But Aëlla met the gaze of her goddess, and Aphrodite spoke just as quietly: _You may._

There were tears streaming down Aëlla’s face, perhaps out of emotion, perhaps because the light of the goddess burned her eyes. Aëlla said, “I know that it was disobedient, to kill the men who killed our sisters. But, Divine Aphrodite, I ask you: was it unjust?”

The goddess frowned. _My child_ , she said, _was that a question or a challenge?_

Aëlla bowed her head. “Only a question.”

General Antiope and Lieutenant Artemis and all the Captains and soldiers were watching Aëlla in wonder and disbelief.

The goddess said, _I know not._ The waves began again, slightly, folding up against the sand. _My daughters, you are brave and wise. I am sorry to see you suffer. I will not destroy you for your disobedience._

The Amazons whispered praises into the sand.

The goddess raised her hand to gesture towards the land. _This island holds a dark secret: a gate to the underworld. As punishment for your disobedience I will bind you to this land for the rest of eternity. You will defend mankind from any monster that escapes the gate._

The goddess stepped forward, approaching Aëlla. _Look at me, my child._

Aëlla lifted her head, and looked up at the goddess with tears in her eyes. The goddess reached down to cup Aëlla’s cheek with one hand, and Aëlla’s tears redoubled.

 _This land is divine,_ said the goddess. _I know I must punish you, my daughters, but I will give you a paradise as your prison._ She looked down at Aëlla. _Is that just?_

“I d-don’t know,” Aëlla breathed.

The goddess smiled, and disappeared. The waves began again in earnest; the fire crackled back to life. Menalippe roused in the arms of her attendants.

Aëlla screamed. Another soldier ran to Aëlla’s side and shouted for Epione, the healer. Aëlla was sobbing and Mala scrambled to be near her, to hold her. There was no blood, but Aëlla’s face was terribly red. She was brutally, permanently burned where the goddess had touched her.

 

For the next three thousand years, Mala never left Aëlla’s side.

 

On a feast day many decades ago, Menalippe delivered a sermon about elephants. Most Amazons have never seen an elephant before, except for the images of elephants in the oldest pieces of pottery, or those lucky few who perform divination rituals alongside the high priestess and get to peer into the world beyond the ocean. Elephants, Menalippe explained, were incredibly large, heavy, regal creatures who roamed green landscapes. They live in groups, they have complex and diverse social lives, and they mourn their dead just as a person would.

Elephants remember everything. Elephants live almost seventy years, which is a very long time for a mortal, and in that time they forget nothing.  They don’t need to write things down in their ledgers, or tell stories to each other in order to account for social history. They simply remember everything.

“We are not elephants,” Menalippe said. “Our memories fade. We live for thousands and thousands of years, but… do we remember our first moments when Aphrodite breathed life into our clay bodies? Do we remember the rage of the Athenians on that fateful summer day? Or are our memories overwritten with the retelling of those stories, over and over again, until we cannot tell what was genuine experience and what was the reinvention of that experience?

“Perhaps that is the price we pay for our immortality. We can only make so much use of the blessing of eternal life, when our rational souls can only hold so much experience inside of us. It seems like a fair exchange.

“It is important that we not behave as if we have the memory of an elephant. I know I can trust my memories from the last week, the last month; I cannot have the same unflinching trust in my memories from three thousand years ago.

“So, when we perform the Catharsis, or when we retell other stories from our history, we must do so _knowing_ that those stories are not perfect recreations of an exact moment in time, but rather a shared cultural legacy. There are elements of truth, yes, but I cannot go into Man’s world tomorrow and say, ‘According to our stories you are the enemy,’ because, in truth, we cannot tell who was the enemy or what they looked like or why they did what they did. The point of our stories is not to identify the enemy in the present world. The point of our stories is to remind us of the history we share together, to remind us of what binds us together as Amazons. That is what really matters.”

 

It has only been a few months. Mala feels Aëlla’s absence every day, every night, like a wound. Like someone cut into Mala’s body and removed Aëlla like an amputated limb.

Mala understands that memories fade. That someday she will look out at the training field, and she won’t feel as if just _yesterday_ Aëlla was there, spinning with the hand-axe, hitting target after target, the straw entrails of a training dummy spilling to the ground. Maybe Menalippe is right, and someday Mala will remember Aëlla as ‘a good warrior,’ and every other detail will fade.

But Mala cannot imagine ever forgetting that she has lost a _limb._ Aëlla’s absence will never be something _abstract._

These days, sometimes Mala wakes up early in the mornings, before dawn. She looks to the bedroll near the window and she expects to see Aëlla, asleep in the moonlight. Instead, she finds the body of a man, who looks so foreign and unnatural in Aëlla’s bed. He keeps invading the spaces where Aëlla’s spirit lay. It makes Mala nauseous.


	10. Near Midsummer - Artemis

The tourney takes place to the east of the training fields. The fence and the benches used to be permanent structures here; the small arena-like space served both as the setting for the annual tournament as well as for smaller meetings and rituals.

It’s the first tourney since the destruction of Steppenwolf’s attack. The benches have been rebuilt, the flags resewn, the armor polished. Amazons from all quarters of the city have arrived to encourage their sisters in combat, whistling and cheering and sharing food in the bright afternoon sun.

“The runner-up,” Artemis announces to the crowd, “will have the honor of representing all her sisters in the Catharsis.”

Applause from the crowd, especially from beside the Queen’s section, where Menalippe and the priestesses are particularly enthusiastic.

 “The winner,” she continues, “will have the honor of representing our sworn enemy, the Athenians, in the Catharsis.”

They still cheer, because the person who plays the Athenian will be the winner of the tournament nonetheless; the strongest warrior. Some amused mumbling from among the ranks of the army, _“not that anyone besides the General_ _is likely to win,”_ but Artemis ignores this.

“Why don’t we just have Clark do it?” Philippus suggests quietly from beside the General. “He certainly looks the part.”

“That wouldn’t be fair, and you know it,” Artemis murmurs under the audience’s cheering.

“What if he wins?” Philippus challenges, half-sarcastic.

“If he wins the tournament, then I suppose it’s his right,” replies Artemis, checking the roster for the names of the first match. “But, _really,_ Philip, I highly doubt you would let him best you in battle.”

Philippus frowns, and stands straighter. “You’re damn right I won’t.”

To the crowd, Artemis announces: “The first combatants are Trigona and Egeria!” The two warriors take to the center of the field, their swords in hand. They face the Queen and bow. Artemis shouts: “Good Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, does this tournament please you?”

Hippolyta smiles and raises her hand in celebratory proclamation, announcing “It pleases me!” With that, her attendant hits the gong, and the crowd cheers as the tournament commences.

 

The rules of the tournament are simple. Everyone who wishes to participate (usually the warriors and guardswomen) is assigned an opponent. Each round, a pair of warriors enters the pitch. The person who draws first blood, disarms their opponent, or gets their opponent to verbally yield is deemed the winner. The winner moves onto the next round, where they will duel the winner from another pairing, and so on and so forth until there are only two warriors remaining.

Artemis is paired with Venelia the wrestler in the first round. If this had been a wrestling match, Venelia might have stood a better chance. She is the foremost expert in unarmed combat and she occasionally runs training intensives with Artemis’ soldiers.

But the weight of the sword is obviously uncomfortable for her, and after a few generous rounds of stabs and parries, Artemis knocks the weapon from her grip, and the attendant strikes the gong.

“Well fought,” Artemis commends her, gripping her forearm in solidarity.

Venelia smiles. “Always an honor to fight with you, General.”

 

The first round of duels is nearing its end by the time Clark is called to fight. There are whoops and hollers as Mala and Clark enter the pitch, especially from the Amazon civilians who have never gotten the chance to see Clark fight. The warriors are a bit less enthusiastic, because they know what to expect from this pairing. Clark and Mala have been sparring almost every day for the last month, and the result is always the same: Clark, landing belly up in the dirt, Mala, standing over him with that sneering grin that usually makes her superiors just want to smack her.

Clark is now much more familiar with the sight of his own blood.

Not that he hasn’t learned anything from his time with the Amazons. According to Lieutenant Euboea’s reports, he’s been making good progress. One afternoon Artemis went to check on his training, and he eagerly fought some practice dummies just to demonstrate for the General the new maneuver he’d mastered. But he’s nowhere near the level of the common Amazon soldier. Not yet.

The warriors in the audience give him a polite cheer anyway.

The Queen interrupts before the match can start, holding up a hand to halt the striking of the gong. She smiles. “Clark Kent, our guest,” she greets him, “I am sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to visit with you since your arrival on our island. Have you found the army hospitable?”

Clark flushes at the direct address. He glances at Mala, as if she would give him some sort of subliminal guidance, but she just shrugs and looks at the dirt. He looks back to the Queen, “Yes, thank you, uh, your highness.” Mala seems to hiss something under her breath, inaudible from the stands. “Your majesty!” Clark corrects himself.

Based on the way the Queen is looking at him, Artemis can safely assume that word of Clark’s fainting episode at the beginning of training has reached her. “I hope you take this opportunity to show us what you’ve learned, Clark,” says the Queen, and then she lifts her fist encouragingly. “I’m rooting for you!”

“Thank you, your majesty!”

 

They are an awkward pairing. Clark is almost three heads taller than Mala, which mostly amounts to a weakness on his part, since she keeps swiping at his legs. He’s doing his best to parry like Euboea taught him, but he only barely catches Mala’s sword before it makes contact with skin. Artemis is particularly amused watching the Queen get invested in this duel, holding her breath when it looks like Mala is about to draw blood, and cheering when Clark successfully fends Mala off. The Queen had never been so enthusiastic when princess Diana had been dueling, but Artemis supposes that the feeling must be different when the one fighting is your own daughter.

Clark grins boyishly when he hears the Queen cheer. Artemis rolls her eyes – it won’t do for him to get a big head, when he’s still barely competent with a sword.

Then, the unimaginable happens.

Clark feints, and uses the flat of his blade to swipe Mala’s legs out from under her. Mala lands hard on her back, and the sword clatters out of her grip.

The sound of the gong, and then the Queen cheering.

Clark seems just as surprised as Artemis. He looks to the Queen and gives her a half-smile.

“What’s she doing—” Phillipus says, somewhere to Artemis’ right.

Artemis is about to ask her what she’s talking about, but Phillipus is already five paces onto the pitch, and she’s running, and Artemis should have seen this coming but at this point it’s too late, and—

For a moment, Clark just stares at the Queen. Then, he looks down, where he finds the tip of Mala’s blade protruding gruesomely from his chest.

“Mala, _no!”_ Artemis shouts, but it’s too late, and she’s sprinting behind Philippus, and other soldiers are swarming the pitch, and the civilians are screaming. Clark makes a horrified, broken sound, and falls to his knees, and Artemis loses track of him in the rush of bodies.

Philippus has ahold of Mala and Artemis takes the girl’s other arm, but Mala is struggling, and sobbing, and tugging forward towards Clark. “No!” Mala screams, “You need to be _better!”_

Artemis growls at the girl, “Mala, how could you do such a thing?” Epione is already on the pitch and shouting for the soldiers to leave the sword inside the wound, and everything is blurring together except the heavy choke-sobbing of Mala.

“He c-can’t just turn around, he needs to be _better…_ he should have s-seen it coming…”

Philippus wrenches Mala’s arm back. “He bested you _fairly!_ ” she shouts at the girl.

“ _The battles he fights will never be fair!_ ” she screams, and her legs buckle, with Philippus and Artemis holding her upright. She sobs. “I can’t let him win, I c-can’t… he needs to be better than me…”

They are lifting Clark’s body and carrying him to the infirmary. Mala is trembling. Artemis wants to cry as well, now that she’s piecing together Mala’s broken reasoning. “Oh, Malika…” Artemis murmurs, lowering Mala to the ground and wrapping her arms around the girl, as Philippus looks at them strangely. “Oh, you foolish girl, what have you done?”

“He needs… to be able to s-save people…”


	11. July 30th - Bruce

Each dream is just a variation on the theme.

It often begins with the sound of buckling concrete, the whirring of grapple lines, the heavy weight of the ceramic sink shattering against the Superman’s skull. Trading blows with the alien monster even when stray beams of moonlight catch Bruce’s attention with the dysphoria of childhood memories in these spaces. In the ruins of the library, Bruce is about to deal the final blow with the spear when something catches his arm. Lois Lane has a hand on his wrist; her expression isn’t pleading, but ferocious. Bruce tries to explain himself but no words come out. Her grip on his wrist tightens, first to almost a painful bruising, and then beyond that. Inhuman strength, and somewhere on the ground the Superman is laughing, even as Lois crushes Bruce’s wrist, fracturing bone, dislocating sockets, severing tendons with the edge of her fingernails, and he screams.

Each dream is just a variation on the theme.

The mausoleum smells like fresh-turned dirt, and rain, and limestone. His fingertips trace the inscription of his father’s name. The overcoat weighs on his shoulders. There is an empty space in the wall reserved for Bruce, someday. Someday soon. Superman’s fingers wrapping gently around Bruce’s neck from behind. “You miss them, don’t you?” whispers the alien, the monster, in a shiver-sweet voice, “You won’t have to miss them anymore… not long now, not long…”

A variation on the—

Two soldiers wearing full combat gear stand guard at a large double-door entry way. They wear masks, and they carry assault rifles, and on their armbands Bruce can make out the Superman crest. They move to the sides of the door and salute when the doors part and Superman enters the room, and they exit to guard the outside, and—

It’s a bedroom. An enormous, stately penthouse suite which surely no one sleeps in, because the Superman does not sleep, and Bruce tries to move, to hide or evade, but he is bound to the wall and entirely unclothed. And the Superman nears him slowly, familiarly, and places a hand possessively on the bare skin of Bruce’s hip, and Bruce feels adrenaline shoot through his body like acid. And the Superman says, softly, “Your mind is far too dangerous to be a part of my new regime… but I’ll make good use of your body.”

A variation on the—

The little pieces of gravel and asphalt dig into the fabric of Bruce’s trousers, he thinks he’s collected all the pearls but he’s worried some fell down the storm drain, can he climb down into the storm drain? He can’t fit all the pearls in only one hand so he’ll have to keep both hands cupped together until he can find some place to put them, unless he puts them in Mother’s purse, but Mother’s purse is wet with blood, and Mother is holding it, and Mother probably wouldn’t want him to take her purse without permission, and Father is watching, after all, watching with his eyes still open, watching Mother, and the blood, and Bruce there holding the pearls.

“It’s alright,” says the man, and Bruce whimpers, a panicked sound. He isn’t supposed to speak with strangers, and Father is watching him, and Father would know if he did. “I’ve got you, it’s going to be alright, Bruce,” says the man, and he closes Bruce’s stiff fingers around the pearls, and he pulls Bruce into his arms.

The fabric smooth like Father’s silk ties. Deep reds, royal blues, “It’s going to be alright,” the man whispers, “I’m going to take you away from here, I’m going to keep you safe.” He wraps his cape around Bruce’s shoulders. The pearls are still safe in Bruce’s hands. The man is so gentle, and warm.

“No more guns?” Bruce asks in a whisper.

“No more guns,” says the man, and he pets Bruce’s hair.

A variation on the—

 

 He wakes. He is in the bedroom of the lake house. He controls his breathing. There is sweat on the sheets. It is almost dawn, and the night sky is lightening to grey. There is a woman sitting on the edge of his bed. She is dressed in white sheets.

“Diana?” he asks.

“No,” says the woman, “I am Aëlla.”

He hears blood in his ears. He realizes he is nude under the sheets.

“What is this?” he demands, his voice hoarse, his skin still damp. “Who are you?”

She turns towards him, slightly, and he can make out dark markings on the side of her face, like… the print of a hand. “Is this how it always is, for you?” she asks him, gently. “So much raw desire, and fear, and need?”

He tries not to respond. She isn’t real; he must still be dreaming. He knows not to respond to hallucinations. He has trained for this. He knows how to keep himself on this side of sanity. He stares resolutely at a point on the sheets and he focuses on waking himself. But – suddenly he is speaking, unintentional, unconscious and reflexive. “I am managing it,” he says, “I have it under control.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” she asks, rhetorically. Then she turns away from him once more, and she looks out the wall of windows to the lake. “I understand your reluctance to acknowledge your feelings. I was once a warrior like you. Any distraction is dangerous.”

“What do you want from me?” The room smells like arousal. Shivers run down his spine.

A wave – as if from the ocean - crests and breaks against the windows. Foam slides down the glass. The lake is still. Aëlla says, “I come bearing a warning.”

“Who is it from?” he demands.

“Like all men, you look at rationality, science, thought, and you think, _this is what matters. This is what is important._ So, you discount the emotional, the romantic, the erotic. You think it is not important.” She shakes her head. “You think it isn’t _real._ You think it is an obstacle, and not itself an end.”

“What matters is justice,” he says. “Irrationality serves no purpose.”

A flash of anger, in her gaze.

(there is a sensation with which few people are familiar, where, after the fifth or so consecutive climax, the self is completely obstructed from conscious thought, and, unable to move, only the sensations of the body exist, and time stands still. for a brief moment, Bruce is struck with this sensation like a thunderclap, and just as suddenly as it arrived it disappears, and he is left feeling dazed, and horrified, and silent.)

“In the myths,” Aëlla murmurs, “when men would disrespect the domain of Aphrodite, she would hunt them, slip into their minds like an infection, and drive them mad. She would haunt them, consume them from the inside.”

“What does she want from me,” he gasps.

“Acknowledge your feelings. Act on them.” She watches the lake, and again a wave crests, and breaks against the glass. “All love is blessed.”

His voice is too fast, but he can’t slow himself. “I don’t mean to disrespect. I understand that love in the pure form has value. But I can’t feel that anymore. You’ve seen my dreams, you’ve seen how awful they are.  I have – issues. It’s all so deformed. It isn’t right.”

“Your dreams are not random products of your intellect. She sends you dreams with intent.”

“And I’m condemned if I don’t heed them?” he growls, “This isn’t godly. This is coercive.”

Aëlla – who until this point had been rather godly herself – suddenly gives a brief snort of laughter. “If Hephaestus sent you a message that you needed to construct something or else you would go mad, and then you constructed it and it was the most magnificent machine ever created by human hands, would you then be so uptight about whether it was coercive?”

He frowns. He looks at the woman seated on the edge of his bed, that illusionary presence. “The most magnificent machine ever created?”

“It would be a worthwhile project, would it not? Because you are a man, and you think those sorts of constructions have inherent value. But a love relationship is something intangible and it’s hard for you to understand… when you are being called upon to create something extraordinary, in that realm.”

“Something… extraordinary…?” His voice trails off. There is warmth in his shoulders, in his chest. His thoughts… are best left unexamined.

Hope. Or something like it. That his terrifying unconscious fantasies would turn into _anything_ even remotely positive…

 

The sound of knocking from the door. Bruce wakes up. He is in bed – and wearing clothes. There is no woman at the edge of the bed. The lake is calm. It is early afternoon. The sound of knocking.

He sits up. “Come in.”

The door opens, and Diana peeks her head inside. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“Forgive me,” she says, “We heard you mumbling in your sleep, and I… had a bad feeling about it. My mistake.”

“It’s alright,” he says. She is closing the door. “Diana,” he says.

She stops, and looks at him.

“Do you know a woman named Aëlla?”

 

Fifteen minutes later, Diana is sitting with him. They are both above the covers, with their backs against the slightly-cushioned headboard. She has made herself a gin & tonic, “for a little Dutch courage,” she says.

He just sits there in his sleep-pants and t-shirt and watches her. She pulls her knees up and sips her drink.

“Amazons do not die very often. When we keep to our island, we can go maybe five hundred years without a single death. Amazons only die in battle, and we don’t go out seeking war.” She takes a deep breath, resting her wrists on her knees and watching the ice shift in her glass. “Things changed when I came of age.  I triggered something in the island’s defenses. There were men on our shores, with guns. Ever since… the lives of my sisters began slipping through my fingers like so many fine grains of sand.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

She half-smiles, and nudges him with her elbow. “Hypocrite,” she says. Then she continues, “Aëlla was one of the more recent losses. She died on Steppenwolf’s blade. I wasn’t there, but… Mnemosyne told me about how it happened. My mother sent an elite group of mounted soldiers to run the mother box away from Steppenwolf. When Aëlla was carrying it, Steppenwolf caught up with her, so she launched the box forward for the next soldier to catch. They all assumed Steppenwolf would care only for the box. But they were wrong – he was vengeful, and even as the box was carried further and further away from him, he turned to slaughter Aëlla.”

“Gruesome,” is all he can say.

They are both silent for a moment. The memory of Steppenwolf is fresh, the memory of his brutality.

“Were you close with her?” Bruce asks.

Diana sighs. “Not really. While I was training in the basics, she was on special missions to defend the island. Our paths rarely crossed.” She takes a sip, and makes a face at the burn of carbonate and gin. “Occasionally I had the opportunity to watch her fight, like at the annual dueling tournaments. Her name, Aëlla, _whirlwind…_ that’s how she fought. She used a double-sided axe and she _spun._ Like dancing. It was breathtaking. Her death was… an enormous loss to all of us.”

“Did she have a noticeable scar?”

Diana peers sideways at him. “How did you know that?”

“I think I just met her in a dream.” Bruce puts his face in his hands. “As a messenger of… Aphrodite. Christ. This is unreal.”

“You have dreams like this often?”

“Mmm. Nothing like the existence of magic to force you to trust in things that can’t be empirically verified.”  He sighs, and tries to look put-upon, when he says, “When Clark comes back, I’m going to have to talk with him.”

“About something in particular?” If she’s made the mental leap to Aphrodite encouraging intra-league fraternization, she doesn’t show it.

“I don’t know. In general. Apparently, your Gods are meddling in the affairs of mortals. Specifically, this mortal.” He frowns at Diana. “Do you believe in all of this?”

More gin. “I killed Ares.”

“You also said that Ares killed the rest of the pantheon, but here’s Aphrodite ringing me up out of the blue.”

Diana shrugs and rests her head against the headboard. Makes her neck look particularly graceful. “Superman died too. Things like this are complicated.” She shuts her eyes. “I killed Ares, but war still exists. As long as war exists, Ares exists, in some form. Ares killed Aphrodite, but love still exists, and out of it, Aphrodite... Perhaps, by the same logic, Doomsday killed Superman, but hope remains. It was hope that brought him back.”

“The world doesn’t work like that for everyone. I’ve… lost so many people I loved. No amount of wishing them back will change… anything.”

“And that’s why you’ve got such complicated feelings about Clark,” she tells him. “You want hope, but you’ve been burned by false hope before.”

A deep breath. The stillness of the lake. Diana’s presence, grounding and familiar. “Fuck,” he says, “I hate magic.”


	12. Near Midsummer - Menalippe

These things happen. As the high priestess, the spiritual center of the entire Amazon tribe, Menalippe has seen worse. She knows how to manage discord. She knows how to help people.

She sends Pythia to handle Mala. . She’s a gifted counselor, and she’ll help Mala transition into life in the city, for as long as Mala’s army suspension lasts. Menalippe trusts that Pythia will help Mala work through the emotions that caused her to lash out at Clark. Maybe she’ll be able to grow from it.

As for Clark, well… maybe Menalippe’s been waiting for a chance to have Clark to herself. He is going to be some sort of hero of mankind, and Menalippe is so eager to teach him. He could become so much more _spiritually grounded_ than the heroes of legend.

She wants to help him find himself.

She has spent so long watching the people around her suffer under the pressure of faith, or the pressure of the lack of faith. The opportunity to engage with Clark, to change him and, through his work, change the world… it’s tantalizing.

She gives him two days’ recuperation before she sends for him. This way, all the initial surgery and sutures have been taken care of, and hopefully Epione’s attention will drift away long enough for one of the acolytes to sneak Clark out the back of the infirmary.

Almost an hour passes, and Menalippe becomes impatient. Has he decided not to come? That would be a great disappointment, after he was so open to training with the warriors.

She opens the door of the sanctuary to go call for the acolyte she’d sent, but…

The small sanctuary is separated from the main temple by a short hallway and then a staircase consisting of ten steps, and upon the second step sits Clark. His skin is completely pale, almost the same color as the layers and layers of sterile bandages wrapped snug around the right side of his torso.

“Sitting out here won’t do you much good,” Menalippe tells him.

Clark looks up at her, his gaze unfocused, and then he looks back down at the ground. “I don’t know if this escaped your notice, high priestess, but I’ve just been _stabbed._ ”

“Oh, again?” She descends the steps and helps him to his feet – he leans on her heavily.

“No, not _again,_ but it’s only been—” he runs out of air and has to breathe again, shallowly, as if it hurts him, “two days and I’m really not sure it’s the best time to – have lessons…”

“Nonsense,” she says, pushing the sanctuary door open and helping him to sit on a bench near the door. He makes a pained noise as he bends to sit. Despite this, she feels gleeful at his presence. “You were only lying in bed. You may as well rest here in the sanctuary and spend time with me.”

He looks unconvinced, and miserable, but he isn’t about to outright deny her, and that’s good enough.

“Besides, it surely isn’t good for your health for Epione to keep you bedridden. You need some fresh air!” This makes him tilt his head, because as far as he can tell, the sanctuary is also an enclosed space. She grins at him, and reaches for the lever on the wall.

The sanctuary is a small circular room, its stone walls engraved with depictions of various myths. Its roof is a dome, made of interlocking wood-hide panels, and when Menalippe pulls the lever, there is the sound of metal ball bearings rolling inside the walls, and the roof unfolds to reveal the morning sun.

The sunlight hits Clark’s face, and his whole body seems to relax. “Oh,” he says.

“Are you willing to stay for a bit, now?”

“Yes’m.”

“Grand.” Menalippe pulls a stool so she can sit across from him.

 

She explains some of what she meant to teach him. It isn’t important to her that he choose the ancient Greek pantheon or the Judeo-Christian mythos, but that he chooses _something_.

“Look,” he says, “I’m not really… from here. These Gods don’t really seem relevant if I’m not human. Besides, is this even that important?” He huffs a breath and looks away. “No offense, but faith isn’t going to shield me from getting violently impaled by sharp objects. You know, this is the second time? Maybe the third time they’ll kill me for good.”

Menalippe doesn’t respond to that. It’s interesting to hear him take this bitter tone, so different from the usual eager-to-please attitude.

He squirms in the silence. The sunlight is bright on his skin. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m not usually one to complain. But I’ve never… been injured like this, for so long. The pain… takes so much energy to endure.”

“I understand,” she says. “That’s actually what I’d like us to work on, together.”

He balks. “My pain tolerance? I’d rather not.”

She chuckles. “Not that.” She stands, and moves over to one of the walls, to the carvings. “I want to work with you on emotional decision-making.”

“Are you going to tell me that I shouldn’t feel emotions?” He frowns. “There are a lot of people in man’s world who think the fact that I feel emotion is dangerous. They’d prefer if I was a robot or something, something predictable.”

“No,” Menalippe says, “I don’t want you to be a robot. But I want to steel you against being _governed_ by your emotions.”

He watches her move around the room, and his gaze focuses on the etchings. “Are those… you’re looking at the myths.” Her fingers brush over depictions of Orpheus, Icarus, Pandora… figures whose split-second decisions became their downfall.

“I am.”

He covers his face with his hands.

Her heart falls – she’s seen this look before, on a young princess. “Clark, you came to this island because you understood the responsibility you bear.”

“I know,” he whispers. “Everyone wants me to learn from other people’s mistakes. Bruce and Diana want me to be better than them. Mala wants me to be better than myself. You want me to be better than these ancient heroes. I don’t know how to be good enough. I’m just going to get myself killed again and then Ma’s heart is going to break and…” he takes a deep breath, as best he can with the bandages and the pain. “I’m sorry, I’m tired, I’m not thinking clearly.”

“Shh,” she reaches out to him, pets his hair, “it’s alright. This is what we are going to do, okay?”

He tries to wipe his face dry, and get ahold of his breathing.

“We’re just going to sit here, and close our eyes, and breathe. That’s your lesson for today. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“Alright,” he croaks.

“And that’s what we’re going to do tomorrow,” she tells him, and she pulls his hands away from his face to hold them, and force him to meet her eyes. “And that’s what we’re going to do the next day, as well. Is that something you think you can do?”

He chuckles, weakly. “Yes,” he says.

“It’s not too much stress? To sit here and breathe?”

“No, it’s not,” he says, smiling.

“Alright then.” She pats his hands, and then she lets go. “Let’s do that, then. Lesson one.”

He shuts his eyes, and tilts his face to the sun.


	13. Midsummer - Artemis

Every year, Artemis finds herself standing still, in the small closet in the back of the armory, waiting for General Antiope, knowing that General Antiope will never arrive. It hurts, even a century later, to perform the Catharsis without her.

A hand on Artemis’ shoulder. “Are you ready, my love?” Philippus asks, and then corrects herself with a teasing tone, “I mean, my _sworn enemy?”_

Artemis makes a non-committal noise, and she strokes a finger down the bronze breastplate of the Athenian armor, still hung on the wall. She remembers Antiope wearing this armor, perfectly mimicking that vague cultural memory of those terrible warriors of the past. “I’ve never been able to sell it quite as well as Antiope,” Artemis murmurs. “The armor doesn’t fit me right; there were never Athenian soldiers who looked like me.”

Philippus says, “There were never Athenian soldiers who looked like Antiope, either.”

“You know what I meant.”

She makes a face. “Why would anyone want to look like an Athenian, anyway?”

Artemis shrugs. “Suspension of disbelief.” She takes the breastplate off the rack, and she starts pulling it onto her body.

Philippus leans against the wall, already wearing her ceremonial Amazon armor. She took the role from Artemis after Antiope’s passing. Of course, the Tourney is what really determines the players in the Catharsis, but Philippus worked hard to be second only to Artemis, and she secures the role for herself year after year. She crosses her arms as she watches Artemis dress. “Do you want to hear a secret?”

“Yes?” The breastplate clips into place, and Artemis reaches for the greaves.

“I think everyone looks forward to our Catharsis, even more than when Antiope did it.”

“Why would you say that?”

“We’re sexier.” Artemis frowns at Philippus, who smirks and continues, “You know what they say: lovers have more chemistry on stage.”

“That’s not what they say,” Artemis tells her, “that’s the opposite of what they say,” but Philippus seems undeterred.

“You know how the others get,” she tells Artemis, coaxingly. “Especially Mnemosyne’s assistants, the historians...? They sit in the front row, they hold their breath when you push me down, eager for you to slip a hand up my skirt…”

“ _Philippus,”_ Artemis groans, rolling her eyes, “that was an accident.”

“Oh yes, it was an accident. Every year, you make the same accident, my coy General.”

Artemis’ cheeks grow hot, and she ties the greaves tighter. “Don’t taunt me, Philip,” she warns, “or I might improvise a more… creative climax to this show.”

“Mmm, you’ll show the boy how it’s done?” Philippus grins, mischievously.

Artemis’ mind stalls for a moment. “Oh gods, I didn’t even think of him.”

“Good! Don’t think of him.”

“No, I mean, did anyone warn him about what to expect? I’d planned to talk to him about it, but he’s been cooped up in the infirmary… Mnemosyne said things might be different where he is from…”

“Artemis,” Philippus’ hands come to cup the sides of Artemis’ face, “Don’t concern yourself with the opinions of a man; this is an Amazon tradition. If he wants to be a part of the Amazons, then he will witness the Catharsis in all its glory.”

“You’re…” Artemis begins to say, and then she sighs, and presses her face against Philippus’ neck, awkward with the armor. “You’re right,” she breathes.

 

The Festival is an all-day affair, primarily devoted to drinking. Sometimes people will recite poetry, or dress in costume, or play music and dance, but mostly they drink and tell stories. There are many, many barrels of wine.

At sundown, the Amazons will gather in the amphitheater for Artemis and Philippus’ performance of the Catharsis, the improvised dialectic retelling of the story of the battle with the Athenians. After that performance, when everyone is good and drunk, those who wish (or those who are egged on by their compatriots) will take the stage to perform their own catharses, improvised theatrical dialogue in the style of the Catharsis but addressing whatever issues are relevant to the players that year. Often the bouts are playful. If the rumors are true, Artemis can expect at least one pairing tonight: Venelia the gymnast, and Lieutenant Euboea of the army, arguing over the relative merits of armed and unarmed combat.

Artemis catches sight of Clark in the early evening, just before sundown. He doesn’t recognize the General wearing Athenian armor, or perhaps he’s just overwhelmed with the crowds and the festivities. It’s strange to see him without Mala by his side. He seems more isolated from the rest of the community without someone like her to bridge the gap. The fact that his medical leave has separated him from his unit probably isn’t helping much.

Artemis hasn’t seen Mala today, but she must be around somewhere, hiding from Clark and probably everyone else as well. She must be ashamed.

It’s a very unfortunate situation and Artemis begins to wonder if the Catharsis would help the two of them, as well. She’ll put some thought into it, and perhaps ask Philippus’ opinion…

“General!”

Artemis turns, and finds the high priestess greeting her. “Menalippe, happy festival.”

“I saw you looking at our poor wingless duck,” Menalippe remarks, tilting her head towards Clark.

“Is that what you’re calling him?”                                          

“Is it not fitting? There’s an air of… endearing patheticness about him, the longer he’s out of commission. He doesn’t like being injured.” Menalippe smiles. “He and I have had plenty of quality time the last few days, and I’m almost certain that I can predict what was on your mind just now.”

Artemis cocks an eyebrow at her. “Predict away, high priestess.”

“You think Clark and Mala should do a catharsis,” declares Menalippe.

“Astute as always,” Artemis admits. “Your thoughts on the matter?”

Menalippe tilts her head, as if this hadn’t occurred to her. “My thoughts? My thoughts… well, it _might_ be a good idea. It certainly couldn’t be a _bad_ idea… could it?”

Across the crowd, Philippus catches Artemis’ eye, before gesturing in the vague direction of the amphitheater. Artemis nods. “I suppose I’ll leave that up to you, Menalippe. You’re the expert in counseling. If you do push them on stage, I’ll stand by to ensure no one is permanently injured, this time.”

Menalippe laughs, “I appreciate the assistance, General. Now go – your Amazon awaits.”

 

Small candles light the rows of the amphitheater, dimly illuminating the five-hundred-some-odd Amazons seated on Festival cushions throughout. Volunteer ushers dressed in ornamental robes roam the seats with pitchers to refill the goblets of the attendees. In the front rows, the usual crowd: the historians, the soldiers, and everyone else who finds the Catharsis especially titillating. The Queen and her attendants are somewhere in the middle, far enough from the stage that Artemis can’t hear what they’re saying, but close enough that she can just make out the smiles on their faces.

Artemis is relieved to notice one of the soldiers has coaxed Clark back into the fold of the army, so he’s sitting towards the front, with Egeria pushing a goblet into his hands and Trigona fluffing his hair.

There are two massive lanterns on the stage used to light the players, with half-domes of metal to shield the light from the audience. At a sign from Artemis, a stagehand runs on to light the lanterns, and there are scattered cheers from the audience (as well as a few drunken hollers).

Artemis and Philippus take the stage together, on opposite ends, each of them holding their respective masks in front of their faces. The masks are large and extravagant, with metal inlays in the eyes to better reflect the firelight. Philippus holds the mask of the Amazon – stern, balanced, triumphant. Artemis holds the mask of the Athenian – wild, furious, masculine. They hold their pose for a moment as the crowd applauds, and then, finally, they set the masks aside on the special mounts on the amphitheater pillars.

Artemis puffs out her chest, and bellows in the voice of the Athenian, “In the beginning, there was Chaos. From Chaos, there were the titans. From the titans there were the gods. Prometheus sculpted mankind from mud, and into us Athena breathed life.” She throws out her arms, emphatically: “Notice, there is no mention of the Amazons!”

Artemis trudges forward, glaring out at the crowd accusatorily. “We Athenians are _mortals_ , we are the race of beings created by the gods in their image, to be individuals, to be rational. You Amazons are merely _puppets_ of Aphrodite. You act so _proud_. When your army tramples the armies of mankind, it is an affront to justice. We need not compare ourselves with the likes of you; you do not _belong_ in this story.”

After so many years playing out the Catharsis, the nuances of the dialogue come naturally to Artemis. She growls out threats and stomps around heavily in the Athenian greaves. Some Amazons are booing, others laughing, and still others are sitting up in rapt attention. She chances a glance at Clark, who is wearing a mystified expression.

“Feh!” Philippus steps forward. “I should have expected your excuses would be as weak as your soldiers. We Amazons triumph in battle over mortals time and time again, and to hide the shame of your defeat, you claim the battles were unjust. What can you possibly know about justice, Athenian? After all, we were only called to defeat you because your greedy, bloody wars were offensive to our goddess!”

Artemis gives an animated scoff. “You think our wars were unjust? Which war did you have in mind?”

“The Trojan war, for one.”

Artemis laughs – a deep, belly laugh that makes some of her soldiers look at her oddly (they rarely see her like this). “We go to war for the love of a woman, and you call it unjust, when you yourselves go to war for the love of Aphrodite.”

“The love of Helen of Troy was not a prize to be won, and neither is the love of our goddess!” Philippus makes eye contact with Artemis – she knows there is a contradiction here that the Athenian is meant to exploit.

Artemis smirks, a slimy expression. “Oh, Helen was not a prize to be won? Then, pray tell, why did _your_ beloved goddess offer Helen to Paris in the first place?”

Philippus gasps, and grabs the handle of her sword in threat.

Artemis steps closer to her. “As I said, you Amazons act so proud, as if Aphrodite is somehow _infallible.”_ She shows Philippus her teeth. “Little girl, you have no _idea_ for what your sword is being used. For this, my men will invade your lands, and put you Amazons back in your place.”

Enthusiastic booing from the audience – including Clark, who seems to have finally gotten his bearings. It takes significant discipline to keep from grinning when she hears him join in with the rest.

At this moment, Philippus draws her sword, and the historians gasp in delight. “Even if you tempt me to question my faith in my goddess,” she snarls, “my loyalty to my sisters will never waver. Draw your sword, Athenian, and test your will against mine.”

The first clash. They angle the swords so they glint in the firelight. Someone shouts, “Go, Philip!” from the Queen’s section. A few blows, and then the Amazon successfully rebuffs the Athenian. Artemis pretends to be thrown to the floor.

“Enough!” she growls, as the Athenian defeated. “Clearly no amount of skill with the sword can overcome a warrior with Aphrodite herself in her pocket.”

Philippus towers over her, enraged. “You doubt my skill, mortal?”

Artemis spits at her feet, and the audience gasps. “You fight with the assurance of victory by the grace of your goddess. I fight with no such guarantee. You could never understand the nobility of sacrifice men like me are made to endure every time we draw our swords.”

Philippus’ gaze softens. “You think your way is… noble?”

“Better than to fight as the strong arm of a capricious goddess.” Artemis sets her sword down, sitting up on the floor. “I yield to you, Amazon.”

Philippus turns to the audience, thoughtfully. “Don’t do it!” someone shouts from one of the back rows.

Philippus removes a golden cord from her waist, adding a twist to her hips that only Artemis will see, and she holds it up for the crowd to view. “This girdle was given to me by Aphrodite. It guarantees an Amazon victory in every fight.” She turns to Artemis. “I have been moved by your words, Athenian. I will no longer wear this into battle… I will fight nobly.”

A beat, and then Artemis launches forward, shouting, “You fool!” She grasps the end of the cord and with it tugs Philippus closer, close enough for them to share breath. “Sanctimonious woman, your pride will be your downfall.”

“No!” Philippus shouts.

Like dancing, Artemis darts to the other side of her, pulling the cord along as well, as Philippus strikes out at the place where her enemy had just been.  Artemis moves Philippus’ body around like a puppeteer, leading the Amazon to spin in confusion. Finally, Artemis binds Philippus’ wrists behind her with the golden belt.

With one hand locked around the Amazon’s wrists, and the other clasped around her throat, the Athenian presents the Amazon to the audience, forcing her back to arch. “My fellow men of Athens, look here!” Artemis shouts. “These Amazons whom you so feared are merely womenfolk _pretending_ to be warriors, abusing the grace of Aphrodite to bring shame upon the Athenian army. No longer will we permit this savagery! We will bring these Amazons back into civilized society by _force,_ if it comes to that!”

She can feel Philippus’ body squirm, she can feel the heat of her breathing. Artemis lets go of Philippus’ bound wrists, instead wrapping that arm around the Amazon’s body and settling a palm firmly and possessively around her hip. In a low voice, Artemis says, “We will teach you the natural order of things.”

She kisses Philippus, still with fingers wrapped around her throat. Entirely accidentally, the hand that had been on Philippus’ hip moves to grip her thigh and slide underneath her skirt. Someone in the crowd screams, another shouts curses in Greek. Some of the historians are blushing. Philippus makes a noise too quiet to be heard in the audience, something pleasurable and soft, which they don’t have time to indulge.

In the back of Philippus’ ceremonial armor there is a sharp, serrated edge hidden from the audience in the folds of metal. By the end of the kiss, Philippus has worn down the ropes at her wrists.

Then, she headbutts the Athenian. They don’t make full contact, but Artemis acts as if she’s been struck, and leaps away while clutching her nose. “What are you doing?” she demands of her captive, “You are nothing without that divine girdle! Submit to me and I’ll let you live!”

Philippus snarls, boldly, “I… submit… to _no_ man!” and when she tugs, the cord binding her wrists snaps, and the gold rope lands in pieces on the floor.

 

It probably is not the verisimilitude of their acting that draws the emotional response from the audience.  They are warriors, not actors. But the drama of the Catharsis was never about realism. It’s always been about recalling these difficult themes in their cultural history, and _releasing_ that emotional tension.

It’s a way of acknowledging their flawed, complicated past while simultaneously emphasizing and celebrating their freedom.

The third time Philippus performed in the Catharsis, many years ago, she pulled Artemis aside afterwards. It was so late at night that it was nearly morning, and the only appropriate way to hold conversation at that hour was in hushed whispers in a shadowy corner of a hallway.

“I feel sick,” Philippus admitted.

“What’s wrong?” Artemis pulled her closer, stroking down her cheek. “Have you drunk too much, love?”

“The things the Athenian says,” she whispered, “the terrible things he says. There is a part of me… that wants to hear it. A part of me that relishes the abuse.”

Artemis took a moment to consider her seriously. She ducked slightly to meet Philippus’ gaze. “Philip,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong with that. Menalippe warned us that it was likely we’d have complicated feelings towards those who—”

“It’s not that,” Philippus spits out, “it’s not that I think there’s something _wrong_ with me. It’s that I want to be rid of those feelings. I hate them and I want them out.”

And Philippus wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

That is the other purpose of the Catharsis. To take those complicated, erotic thoughts about their bondage, and refocus the center of eroticism onto the act of _liberation._

Perhaps that explains why the historians get all excited during the performance, or why the warriors get so loud in their cheering, or why Mala is somewhere in the back row in tears.

 

After the main performance, the crowd dwindles. Some head to sleep, some head back to the feast, and still others have… more intimate activities in mind for festival night. Those who remain in the amphitheater shift closer into the vacated seats, and what was once a crowd of over five hundred shrinks to maybe fifty, give-or-take. Primarily the army.

Artemis and Philippus take seats with the rest, now that they’ve changed out of the armor and into more comfortable robes. An attendant brings them goblets.

“To liberation,” Philippus says, holding up her drink with a tired smile.

“To liberation!”

The smaller catharses begin. They aren’t always flashy; sometimes they’re as simple as two soldiers from the same unit arguing over who stole whose desserts. Still, it’s a pleasant atmosphere.

As promised, Euboea and Venelia take the stage to argue the relative merits of armed and unarmed combat. They sneak some cheeky slapstick in their dialectic performance, with Euboea using a staff to spar with Venelia, and Venelia using Euboea’s weapon against her in creative, playful maneuvers. The two of them bow at the end of their performance, more practiced than the usual improvisational catharses.

Euboea then steps forward, “Anyone else?” she asks the small crowd, “The stage is free.”

“Stop it,” Artemis hears from somewhere behind her. Over her shoulder she spots Mala, at the very edge of the lamplight in the stands. “I said no,” the girl says to… it seems to be Menalippe pestering her. “Leave me alone!”

“Oh come on, Mala,” Euboea goads lightly from up front, turning everyone’s attention to that small spat going on in the corner, “It’ll be good for you; that’s what this is for.”

Peripherally, Artemis notices Clark has gone tense, at the sound of Mala’s voice, but Trigona puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“It’s a bad idea,” says Mala. “I’m – I’m going to bed.”

“Clark would be happy to do it,” Menalippe presses, “wouldn’t you, Clark?”

All eyes on Clark. “Happy to do what?” he asks.

“To do a catharsis.”

He blanches, and looks at the stage. “You want me to…?” Surreptitiously, Egeria takes his goblet from him. “Oh, I… I don’t think I know the rules…” he says.

“It is very easy,” says Menalippe. “All you do is debate. The only rule is that you _must_ prioritize the dialectic over winning the argument. Your goal isn’t to win; your goal is to perform the argument from start to finish, taking turns to speak, and making sure the audience can hear each point clearly.”

“Um,” says Clark.

The other warriors from his unit are pushing him onto the stage. Likewise, Menalippe has taken Mala’s hand, and the high priestess leads her down the steps to the front.

Philippus leans against Artemis’ shoulder and takes a sip of her wine. “This will be interesting,” she says. “Does Epione know about this?”

“I doubt it,” Artemis whispers, “I am sure she is busy brewing hangover cures for tomorrow morning.”

“Mmm,” Philippus hums, “As long as they don’t give that girl a sword, he will probably make it out alive. Will we be the ones to intervene if something goes wrong?”

Artemis slouches comfortably in her seat, and she takes a long swig. “Let the others handle it.”

Philippus snickers into her shoulder.

 

Mala and Clark face each other. Clark’s bandages are still visible under his robes. Mala looks weary, and she holds out her arms as if to say, “here I am.”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” says Clark, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Speak up!” shouts Egeria from the stands.

Clark stiffens, and repeats himself, lifting his chin and projecting his voice more this time, “I don’t want to fight with you.” The injury had put a damper on his mood and expression for the last few days, but some of that lingering cloud disappears as he stands up there on the stage. To Artemis, he seems to be renewing himself in Mala’s presence, like he’s surer of himself now that he can look his betrayer in the eye. “I understand that you made a mistake in the heat of the moment. I’ve made similar—”

“I never said it was a mistake,” Mala interrupts. She meets Clark’s gaze.

The warriors in the stands sit up and lean forward as the tension kicks up. Mutedly, Egeria is trying to remind Mala that she isn’t supposed to interrupt, but neither player seems to be listening.

Clark tilts his head. “Excuse me?”

Mala’s jaw goes tense, and she sets her feet shoulder-width apart, standing her ground. “I never said it was a mistake,” she says again. “I don’t regret what I did. I don’t know why you would assume that I regretted it; I never apologized.”

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and he just studies her for a moment. Finally, “Mala, you were my best friend for two months and then you _literally_ stabbed me in the back. If it wasn’t a mistake, it’s the most dishonorable thing you could possibly do.”

“Call it whatever you like; it matters not. I care only that you learn from your mistakes.”

“ _My_ mistakes? You tried to _kill me!_ ” And then he wobbles back on stage and holds a hand to his head for a moment. He mumbles something like, “Oh geez, déjà vu.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Mala asserts, “I was just trying to teach you a lesson.” Now she crosses her arms, and she becomes smaller on the stage, and Artemis glances over at Philippus, who is watching intently. “You beat me,” Mala says, “and that meant that your skill had surpassed mine, in fair battle. But I needed to give you _everything_ I had, I needed to make you stronger than me in _every_ way. I was… weeping, at the time, because the moment of my defeat had come much earlier in your training than I’d anticipated. It underscored how weak I was… am…”

“You’re not weak,” he interrupts, but she isn’t listening.

“But I was always planning to betray you,” says Mala, “because… I knew it would teach you far more than my friendship ever would.”

He shakes his head. “What is it that you expect me to take away from this? Am I supposed to never trust anyone? Never form relationships? Always be ready for someone to try to strike me down?”

“ _Yes,”_ Mala tells him. “That’s the only way you’ll survive.”

“What kind of life would that be?” he demands. “Is that the standard you hold yourself to? Is that the standard you all hold yourselves to?” He looks out at his audience, and, though he likely can’t see her beyond the lanterns, Artemis gestures a no. There is murmuring among the collection of soldiers.

“You need to be more than us,” says Mala, “you need to be… some sort of hero. You can’t make the same mistakes I did.”

“What about the mistakes you’re making right now?” His voice goes soft. “Mala…”

“Don’t.”

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” he says, “You’re… tenacious, and resilient. There are so many things I can learn from you that don’t involve destruction. That don’t involve paranoia. There needs to be a balance, here, when you’re working out the things you can control versus the things that are worth controlling.”

Mala turns her back to him. “It’s not paranoia if there are real threats that will kill the people you love.”

Artemis knots her fingers with her companion’s. “I can’t watch this,” she whispers to Philippus.

Mala says, “If I’d been more vigilant, if I’d expected the _worst_ of my enemy, then Aëlla would be alive.”

Clark falters. “Aëlla…?”

Suddenly, Trigona is shouting, and standing, and trying to move towards the stage while the others hold her back. “How can you say that?!” she demands of Mala, “You are not the only one who loved her!”

“Trigona!” Artemis tries to put authority in her voice, but it wavers, “stand down.”

“Aëlla was the most brilliant fighter in the world,” Trigona cries, “and when you blame yourself for her death, you blame all of your sisters and Aëlla herself. How dare you.”

“It’s true!” Mala shrieks.

“How _dare_ you!”

“Enough!” Artemis pushes herself to her feet, “Enough.” They listen this time. Artemis isn’t wearing her armor, but they listen to her when it matters. When it really matters. Trigona cedes, allowing Egeria to pull her down to her seat once more. Mala’s whole body is closed off, unwilling to look at anyone, hugging herself. The lanterns are beginning to dim. “This is a time of healing,” Artemis tells them, tiredly. “Synthesize, or get off the stage.”

Mala begins to walk away. “I told you this was a bad idea—”

“Wait.”

The amphitheater is entirely silent, but for the sound of Clark taking one step forward.

He asks, “You loved this woman?”

Mala nods, her gaze trained on the floor. “With all my heart.”

He asks, “Would you have betrayed her?”

“What?” she breathes.

“Would you have… would you have betrayed her, run her through with your sword… would you have ruined that trust, and forced her to harden her heart… if it meant she might be vigilant enough to live?”

It’s impossible to imagine. The thought of Mala… puppy-dog Mala whose every moment spent in Aëlla’s presence was like a religious epiphany… the thought of Mala ever hurting Aëlla is inconceivable.

As inconceivable as Artemis hurting Philippus, or as inconceivable as Clark hurting… anyone.

Mala stares at Clark, and her expression is one of increasing horror as the moments pass. “I…” she finally says, “I wouldn’t be… strong enough to do it…”

“It isn’t about being strong enough.” Clark smiles sadly, and softens his voice further, “It’s about knowing that trust is something _important,_ something precious that should never be destroyed. Life without the capacity for that kind of love isn’t worth living.”

It is really over, then. Mala has nothing left to say, and the lantern is going to go out, and Trigona is standing up and going to the stage and wrapping her arms around Mala, who is going to collapse, fall to the floor in tears again. But perhaps… with less guilt than before. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and Clark comes near them, saying something inaudible from the stands.

Philippus takes a deep breath. “He is… something else,” she says.

Artemis hums affirmatively, and lifts up the dregs of her wine in a quiet toast. “To catharsis,” she whispers.

“To catharsis,” agrees Philippus.


	14. August 29th - Bruce

The featureless horizon, the single blue tone of the ocean water, consistent and endless in all directions… lends itself to a sort of highway hypnosis.

That’s why he flinches. Startled, Diana pulls her hand away. She’s standing next to him in the cockpit, right in his peripheral blind spot. He couldn’t see her; it wasn’t that he was entranced by the sea. “What is it,” he asks, turning back to the controls.

He’s tense. Of course he’s tense. He’s meant to face Superman in close quarters and… and… apologize? Confess his loyalty like drool, unseemly and unwanted?

“We’re nearly there. May I fly it now?”

Diana’s question is so bizarre that it shocks him out of his concentration. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not as if you know where we are going, Batman.”

She’s messing with him; he hates when she messes with him. “You’re my navigator,” he reminds her, simply, “Just tell me where to go.”

“That’s not how it works,” she tells him, with a quirk to her lips, and then she starts bodily pushing him out of the captain’s chair, her hands on his side and his shoulder. “It’s a magic island, so you can only reach it with a magic captain.”

He resists, gripping the controls. “You don’t know how to fly the batplane.”

“I’ve been flying airplanes since before you were born.”

“Diana - oof!” and he lands on his hipbone on the metal floor.

She cracks her knuckles, grinning like a child. “Batplane? Hmm. Now it’s the Dianaplane.”

The plane takes a steep nosedive, straight down into the waiting maw of the sea.

 

It’s almost September. Three months in the real world could be anywhere between six months and a year on the island, or it could only have been one month, and they won’t know which version of reality Themyscira is choosing to follow until they land on her and take a look around. At least, that’s how Diana had explained it. Bruce has his reservations. He has a hunch that they could have just used Diana’s magic mirror or whatever to call someone on Themyscira and ask them what day it was on their end. But Diana is trying to get him to go to the island in person, and he… acquiesces.

She lands the plane without issue, and she darts into the back cabin to change out of her work clothes and into her armor. Meanwhile, Bruce is watching the cliffs, waiting for the shadow of a horse on the horizon.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to put you in robes?” Diana asks when she returns. “You’ll look a bit strange.”

He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater and dark jeans, with sturdy shoes. He shrugs at her. “They’ll treat me like an outsider either way.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s what I’ve gleaned from the way you speak of them.”

She purses her lips and studies him, his contemporary clothing. “Fair enough,” she says.

 

No horses come riding down to greet them. They stand together on the beach of Themyscira, where they can see nothing but ocean and cliff face. Diana has her hands on her hips. “This is strange,” she says.

“Maybe the Amazons never existed and it was all just a dream,” he suggests, drily.

“Not funny.”  She looks at the cliff, and then back at Bruce. “I suppose we will walk. I know the way.”

“Do you think something is wrong?”

She considers it for a moment. “No,” she says, as she leads him towards the path up the cliff. “Do not worry, Bruce; it is just a better opportunity to view the scenery.”

Diana has always been rather forthcoming with stories about her life on the island, and the natural beauty of the place in person doesn’t disappoint. He notices, as they climb the path, that all the vines which scale the rock face are _alive_ … there isn’t a single dead piece of foliage. The ocean is bluer here than it was from the sky.

A beautiful place, an unnaturally beautiful place, and it feels wrong to ask Clark or Diana to ever leave this island, when they would fit in so well.

Diana doesn’t give any indication that she’s bothered about the circumstances of finally seeing her homeland again, after so long. Or perhaps the fact that she’s masking her feelings tells him enough about it. She wants to feel at home here, again, and he keeps silent. He knows what it’s like, to want to go back to one’s childhood, and he has no words of advice for her.

Suddenly Diana squeals delightedly, “Karkinos!” and she points somewhere ahead of them, “Look, look who I found, Bruce!”

He squints. “I don’t… I don’t see what you’re seeing.”

With a frustrated noise, she runs off in the direction she’d been pointing, and after a moment she returns holding what looks like a basketball-shaped rock.

“Is that…?” he asks, as she coos at it and pets it, “That’s an armadillo.”

“We called it Karkinos.”

“Armadillos are only native to the Americas and we’re nowhere near the Americas,” he tells her, though she already knows this. “Also,” he reminds her, “Karkinos was a crab.”

“Nonsense; this is Karkinos and the crab stole his name. He’s not an armadillo, though. I think he came out of the gate before I was born. Mother wanted him killed but General Antiope liked him.” Diana is walking away from Bruce, continuing to lead him up the path, still carrying her little balled-up companion.

“The gate?”

“The gate to the underworld.”

“Of course,” he says, “the gate to the underworld, which you definitely would have mentioned to me if it was anything to worry about.”

“Absolutely,” she confirms, which doesn’t settle the sense of doom that just took root in Bruce’s stomach. “Don’t you think he’s cute?” she asks, and she shows Bruce the bottom of the ball where the armadillo’s head meets his tail.

“Very,” he tells her.

“Do you wish to pet it?”

“Absolutely not.”

 

She points to the city, distractedly. From here, he can see the architecture, a central octagonal tower with old growth vines shrouding its roof, fresh waterfalls flowing down the rows of brick and stone buildings, gardens and archways and… everything built there looks like it was built for more than just _use._ Everything was _designed_ , for beauty, for wholeness, for symmetry.

For a moment he feels so relieved, that this is where they sent Clark. Raise him from the dead and offer him Heaven as penance. It won’t make up for everything, or anything really, but… Bruce is at least glad that these are the sights that Clark got to live with.

But they’re not entering the city. Instead, Diana is leading him across farmland towards what looks like flat green fields. She’s still carrying the damn armadillo and he pities her, because it’s the only living thing that came to greet her. “Watch your step,” she tells him, once they reach the edge of farmland, and he notices the pockmarked earth, the holes and divots that mar this patch of turf. “Shrapnel,” she explains.

In the distance, he can make out armored bodies in organized sparring pairs. That’s where they’re heading. He doesn’t see anyone inexplicably flying, nor any signs of a red cape. One person stands to the side of the sparring to watch. Probably an officer, with armor a bit more built up than the rest.

Bruce feels… unaccountably relieved, when the Amazons finally catch sight of Diana, and scream, and swarm her like family, hugging and cheering and kissing and crying. It is… what should have happened on the beach, and he’s relieved that it happens now, and that Diana… gets to experience this. They’re speaking in pieces of English and Greek and Latin and Hebrew and a few other languages that Bruce can’t place.

A few minutes pass, and finally Diana recovers enough from the bombardment of affection to introduce Bruce, breathlessly, as “a friend of mine.”

The woman in officer’s armor cocks an eyebrow. “Another one?”

“Not to train,” Diana corrects, “just to visit. Bruce, this is Captain Euboea—”

“Lieutenant,” the woman corrects.

Diana’s face falls, which seems to Bruce to be the opposite of the appropriate reaction to a promotion, but he doesn’t say anything. “Right,” says Diana, “Lieutenant Euboea, and…” she lists names one after the other and he can’t catch them all, but he smiles and nods all the same. He doesn’t ask where Clark is because, because he’s not impatient, he can relax for one second, he can.

Unless Clark is dead. Unless Clark just died, or something, and no one wants to tell them.

“We had no idea you were coming home,” says one of the soldiers.

“To visit,” Diana says again, “just to visit, I don’t… I don’t think it’d be right for me to stay.”

“Why not?” demands another, “This is still your home. You belong with the Amazons—”

“Alright,” Euboea interrupts, placatingly, “she’s only just arrived, let’s not start things off wrong. Shall we bring you to the mess or would you like to head into the city? I’m sure the Queen would be—”

“The mess is fine, we were hoping to check in with Clark.”

“Of course! Of course, let’s head there,” and Euboea doesn’t even bother leaving her soldiers to sparring; she seems to know no one will be able to focus at this point.

Behind this conversation, Bruce notes a horse sprinting down from the city to the low buildings near the fields, and the knot of dread in his gut tightens. Something is going wrong, something has to be going wrong, something _always_ goes wrong.

 

They enter the courtyard of the army barracks, and Bruce knows for sure that something is wrong, because that horse is here, and a messenger on its back, and the woman who must be the General has a serious expression as she listens to the report, and six other soldiers surround her, in fuller battle gear than the ones back at the training fields.

“Is something wrong?” asks Euboea, approaching the messenger and the General.

The general is tall, broad-shouldered and generously muscled, with lines of wisdom etched into her dark skin. If he could place her expression, he’d say she seems concerned, but not alarmed. “A breach at the gate,” she explains to her lieutenant, “Nothing too dangerous, but it’s a horde and it needs to be handled quick. Clark!”

“Yes, General?” responds one of the soldiers, briskly.

“You’re commander. I have your back. Handle this.”

“Yes, General.”

And damn, Bruce wouldn’t have noticed him. Bruce wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup. This isn’t Superman, this is… this is Clark, wearing all the same armor as the rest of the soldiers, standing proud in leather and sandals and a helmet, he looks…

 

“What are you doing here?”

That’s how Clark greets them.  Now that he’s stepped forward out of the lineup, he notices Diana and Bruce among Euboea’s group. He looks stunned, under the helm.

The General, too, notices the outsiders, but her attention goes to Diana, and – they’re embracing, tight like family, more tears.

Clark keeps looking back and forth between Diana and Bruce, and Bruce says nothing, because he can’t speak, because Clark looks like a soldier, like a stranger, again.

He’s alive, which is… and he’s here, and he’s an Amazon. And he’s alive, and fit, and unharmed.

“Are you here to stay?” asks the General when she finally pulls away.

“Just to visit, to check in on your trainee here. Clark,” says Diana, “it’s so good to see you.”

He hesitates, then forces a smile. “You too.”

“Well, you couldn’t have better timing,” says the General, “he’s off to lead his unit against some beasts. You’ll see all the progress we’ve made with him. Let’s get you a horse, Di, come join us. Clark, you head out with the others and we’ll catch up with you.”

“Wait,” says Clark, “Wait, but—” and he’s staring at Bruce, and Bruce is staring back.

 _Something magnificent,_ is what Aëlla had said. _Something extraordinary._

“Clark,” says the General, and she takes his shoulder and forces him to make eye contact. “You’ve trained for this. Distractions can wait. If you don’t take care of the horde now, they’ll reach the farms.”

Under the General’s gaze, Clark shuts his eyes, and takes a deep breath. When he opens his eyes, he has renewed his determination. “Yes, General.”

He doesn’t say anything to Bruce. He doesn’t even look back. He just turns and leads his soldiers to the stables, quick and efficient, except for when one of the others gives him an affectionate punch in the shoulder, and Bruce can see Clark grin before they turn a corner and disappear.

The General is hugging Diana again, and Bruce is standing there. He doesn’t know how much time passes, and then he feels Diana’s hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?” she asks, “We’re going to get horses, can you ride?”

“I can ride,” he says. He isn’t looking at her.

“You’ll ride with me,” she says, and he just follows.

 

Clark looks like one of them. He looks like he fits in.

Bruce is sitting behind Diana on the horse with his arms wrapped around her middle. She’s color-commentating the battle, which they are stood a safe distance away from. The General forbade them from intervening, or something, Bruce wasn’t listening. It’s some kind of test, or exhibition of Clark’s skills, and Diana wants to talk about all the details of what the soldiers under Clark’s command are doing, the different formations.

The monsters are grotesque quadrupeds, which might look like lions, if Bruce gave enough of a damn to look at them. But he’s watching Clark.

Clark looks like he fits in.

And.

The way the armor fits him. The splay of leather skirt as he launches from the back of the horse and lands battle-ready on the forest floor. Like classical pottery, like some kind of Adonis, like a man _physically destined for greatness._ Ducking the beast’s bite and using a shield to bash the thing away from him, Clark shouts something, and the other soldiers also jump from their horses with shields at the ready.

He looks like he knows what he’s doing.

He looks sure of himself.

That fight on the Gotham rooftops, where Clark finished every blow with, _I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to hurt you_ , and then inhaled six ounces of kryptonite dust.

Completely unlike this new man.

This soldier looks like he could command the world.

Nausea. Interest. Wonder. The unit of Amazon soldiers encroach on the territory of the beasts, pushing the seven lion-like things back further and further, shield-bashing or threatening as much while the greenish monsters snarl and drool and rage and try to pounce. “A little bit further!” shouts Clark to his team. “Past the boulder!”

“Clark!” says one of the soldiers, “This is insane! We just need to take them out—”

“We can do this!” he tells them. “Follow my lead!”

 The soldiers are in a U-shape. On one end, the smallest of them all, squaring off against the hulking body of the beast, its eyes tracking her down.

It launches forward at the small soldier. Both Diana and Bruce reach for weapons – “Mala!” shouts Clark, somewhere, and then he grabs his fellow and launches into the air.

The beast froths at the mouth, trying to leap up to reach its stolen prey. Clark is hovering. Another soldier beats the beast back again, and the two flying members of the group return to ground.

“I had it handled,” argues the soldier Clark had saved.

“I know,” he says.

“It could have got away.”

“I know.”

Another of the group: “We’re getting near the boulder!”

Under Clark’s instructions, they turn their formation, herding the beasts into one area just behind this large rock. The glow of something like sunlight shooting up from the ground. Shouting.

Congratulatory applause from Diana and the General. The beasts are gone. The soldiers cheering. Clark and that one girl, still arguing.

The General, in disbelief, muttering, “He managed not to kill them. Something else, indeed.”

Bruce feels pinned with bewilderment and he lowers his face against Diana’s shoulder and shuts his eyes because his chest feels like he’s been caught in a finger trap.

 

As they turn to head back to the barracks, Clark asks Bruce and Diana, “What did you think?” with a hopeful, proud expression.

Diana heaps praise on him. Bruce can’t speak, so he tries to smile and give a thumbs-up. Clark gives him an odd look.

They have dinner with the army in the mess hall. The food is good, a chicken dish that Alfred would approve of, seasoned well, not what Bruce would normally expect from army rations. But Themyscira seems plentiful, so, maybe this is to be expected. Paradise Island.

Everyone scrapes a bit of food from their plates into the fire as a sacrifice to Aphrodite. Clark included.

Hardly the chance to speak with Clark or Diana the whole meal, since everyone’s so eager to congratulate Clark or reunite with Diana. Plenty opportunity to watch them from afar, though.

 

Bruce has been studying Clark for almost five years. News footage, newspaper clippings, photos. YouTube clips. Watching Clark’s face, watching for tells, about the way he interacts with people, about what he thinks of people, about how likely he is to turn rogue and conquer the planet.

Clark has never looked so integrated.

So much touching. His colleagues ruffling his hair, nudging him, clapping him on the back. Grasping his forearm like a warrior’s handshake. Cupping his face in their hands as they give him their sincere congratulations.

Clark has never looked so relaxed around people. So happy to see them and be near them. Happy to be a part of this community.

Clark has never looked so fulfilled. So proud. So popular.

At the end of the meal, Diana returns to Bruce’s side, and Clark approaches. He asks, “Should I be packing?” His expression is guarded, like he’s trying not to give away the disappointment.

“There’s no rush,” Diana assures him, “I imagine we’ll stay for a few days.”

“Alright,” he says, pausing a moment. Then, glancing at Bruce, he says, “I hope I’ve accomplished what you wanted me to, in this time frame. General Artemis says I’ve made progress, but I’m not sure exactly what you were expecting from me.”

“You’ve done well,” Bruce says. The tension in his chest has been easing, the more he observes. It’s not so difficult to speak, now. But he has nothing more to say.

At least, nothing more to say to Clark. He knows what he needs to say to Diana, later, alone.

“I have a present for you,” Diana says. She reaches into the rucksack she’d retrieved from the plane.

“I didn’t know we were doing gifts,” Bruce mutters.

“It’s just something little,” she says, and she finally holds a wooden box up to Clark, about the size of a fist.

“What is this,” Clark asks with amusement, “a graduation present?” He opens the box, and his eyes shine. “Oh, wow.”

“To pin your robes.”

“Diana…” Clark carefully removes the broach from its box, and Bruce catches sight of it – the Superman insignia, the crest of the house of El, gold, shining in the lamplight. “This is…” he chuckles, “I’m speechless. Thank you.”

She stands to embrace him. “You’re welcome,” she says.

 

After that, they leave Clark with his unit. The soldiers had been goading him into a night of revelry – first time in the history of Themyscira that a monster was pushed _back_ into the underworld gate. Let alone seven of them. Lots of wine on hand.

Bruce itches to tell Diana what he thinks of all this, but he lets it wait. Diana needs to speak with her mother, and there’s obviously some sort of tension there that Bruce isn’t totally privy to.

“I think it will be fine,” Diana says to Bruce, as they head up to the gates of the city.

This is the first she’s spoken in about ten minutes, which belies her certainty.

He doesn’t have any advice to lend her about conflicts with parents, but he nods and agrees with everything she says to herself.

“She understands that I needed to leave,” Diana continues to tell herself, and Bruce nods. “Mother was worried for my safety, but now that she knows that I can handle myself, she’ll… she’ll be alright with this.”

The attendants bow to Diana, when they reach the door to the royal chambers, and Bruce is again reminded that Diana is something more even than the rest of the Amazons. He wonders if they would bow to Clark, if they understood what he really is.

Diana turns to Bruce. “This is something I need to do on my own,” she says. Not a question.

“I understand,” he tells her. “I’ll stay here.”

“Thank you,” she says, and then she passes through the door.

There is a stone bench in the hallway outside the Queen’s chambers, presumably because people wait here often. The attendants offer him a drink, but he thanks them and says he doesn’t need anything. Just the space to think.

 

Clark is flourishing, here, where he has friends who are his equals. To bring him back into a world where everyone is so far below him would be cruel.

He doesn’t need Bruce’s help, certainly. He doesn’t need Bruce at all. Not the way Bruce needs him. That’s fine. Bruce is… planning for his own obsolescence, anyhow. Wouldn’t do to offer Clark the loyalty of a man who probably won’t live to see the next decade. No matter.

Clark is flourishing, here.

 

Later, Diana emerges from the royal chambers.  Her face is tear-stained, but satisfied. He assumes they must have resolved their troubles.

Said things like, _I love you, mother._

It’s late. “We’re going to stay in my old quarters,” Diana says softly, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Thank you for waiting.”

Her room is another marvel of architectural beauty. It’s all done in gold, and circles, with an impression carved into the wall like a rising sun serving as the headboard of her bed. The bed itself – only furs, and woven blankets, pillows with soft, thick pelts. There are two hearths on either side of the bed, both already lit, reflecting in the gold plating of nearly every solid surface. They change into clothes for sleeping, and then, absently, Diana asks, “Are you comfortable sharing? If not, I can ask for more bedding to be brought in.”

“It’s fine,” he says, “Doubt I’ll sleep much anyway.”

“Right,” she turns to him, sniffles and clasps her hands together, to give him her full attention, “right, we were meant to be discussing Clark.”

He hesitates, noting her watery smile. “Diana…” he says, “it can wait. You’ve got a lot on your mind.”

She smiles wider, and sits on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she says, “it has been almost a century since I’ve seen her and I just… I feel so… relieved.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“But we can still… come, Bruce, we can still discuss things.” She pats the bed and he sits where she gestures.

The bedding is softer than it looks, but still probably not great for his spine. Would be easier if he were a meta like everyone else on the island.

“He doesn’t want to go home,” Bruce says, finally. More like he announces it.

“What do you mean, he doesn’t want to go home?” Diana inquires, gently.

He says, “he likes it here. This is where he’s supposed to be. This is the first time he’s felt like he belonged somewhere.”

“I see,” says Diana. She doesn’t question Bruce’s read on the situation. “Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“He’s practically one of them,” Bruce says. “He dresses the same, he engages in all the same activities, he has best friends, he smiles and laughs with them, he’s not afraid of hurting them…”

“But the world needs Superman,” Diana says. It’s a truism. She looks at Bruce fondly, apologetically.

“Damn the world,” he says.

 

She talks him down, gently. She reminds him of the good that Superman does in the world. Keeping the parents of young children safe. Bruce can’t deny the world that. He just can’t.

And not when Diana says it like this. The gentle reminders of someone who has tried to abandon the world before. She knows where that path leads, and she won’t let Bruce get lost like she was.

She’s trying to comfort him, though. “I know what it feels like,” she says, “to see the people you love happy, and to want nothing more than to preserve that moment, fill it with amber and make it something permanent. Life isn’t like that. Moments like these are fleeting. You can acknowledge how precious they are, and then you need to let them go. There is work to do to repair this world, and we have been called to it.”

She’s right, of course. She’s…

 

“I need some air,” he says.

“You’re not going to try to leave Clark and I on the island, are you?” she asks him, half-playing. “Clark would still be able to fly us home.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m not leaving.”

Her hand on his shoulder, a squeeze. “Alright then. Goodnight, Bruce.”

“Goodnight.”

 

He leaves the royal chambers, heads down the stone steps, hands in his pockets. There is enough moonlight by which to see his way. It casts the whole city in deep hues of blue.

A covered walkway connects the tower to the rest of the city, with enormous circular windows through which passersby can see the horizon, the reflection of the moon in the ocean’s waters.

Lounging in one of the windows is Clark. His posture is relaxed, as he observes the vast night sky. He is still wearing his armor, and over that, his robes, fastened at the shoulder with the Superman insignia that Diana had gifted him. “I thought you’d end up out here,” Clark says softly, though he doesn’t look at Bruce, content instead with watching the stars.

“I thought you were out drinking.”

“It doesn’t do as much for me as for the others,” he says. “Besides, they’ve gone to bed by now. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I assumed as much,” says Bruce.

Clark turns to look at him, for just a moment. His expression is wistful, and then he averts his eyes. “I’ve learned a lot, here. Not just fighting. I wanted to say… I’m sorry for the things I said to you at the museum. I don’t blame you for… for anything, really. You were doing what you thought was right.”

“I was wrong.”

“Mm,” Clark shrugs, slowly. “It was unfortunate, yes, but not blameworthy.” He turns back to the moon. “I think I know the kind of person that I want to be. That’s something my dad always told me, that I had to decide about what kind of man I was. I think I know, now.”

A moment, like this. The wind runs its fingers through Clark’s hair. “You look…” Bruce begins, and he wants to say _beautiful,_ or _otherworldly,_ or _godlike,_ but what comes through most of all is “…happy. You look happy, Clark.”

“I am,” Clark says.

“If you wanted to stay,” Bruce tells him, “you could. I wouldn’t stop you. I could never… take you away from this.”

Clark laughs, a little. “Diana would disagree.”

“Diana isn’t here.”

“Bruce…” Clark chuckles, but he lets it trail off.

In the silence, and the dark of night, Bruce feels the weight of the cowl, even though he isn’t wearing it. Through that weight, he watches Clark, and he knows that if he doesn’t do this now, his fear will always hold him back.

He has to do this on blind faith.

He says, “I also have something I wanted to give you.”

Clark glances at him, murmuring, “You really don’t have to…”

“The code,” Bruce says, “1-0-1-8-1-9-8-1.”

Clark tilts his head, to peer at Bruce from the windowsill. “Your parents’ death,” he says.

Pearls. The memory of the red cape, in his dreams. Bruce says nothing.

“What’s the code for?”

Bruce shakes his head, showing Clark the empty palms of his hands. “Everything,” he breathes. “It overrides everything. Every file. Every safe. The kryptonite. Everything.”

Clark shifts, sitting up, studying Bruce, scrutinizing. “Why?” he asks.

“Because I—” Bruce whispers, stares at the floor, “I trust you more than I trust myself. I think you’re what the world needs. I think all I can do at this point is… offer everything I have, everything I am to you. I don’t… I don’t know anymore, it’s just…” he cracks, a helpless smile, “it’s a little impulsive. I don’t think I’ve been acting very rational.”

“Bruce…” Clark says, like a warning, like he’s unsettled by this.

Perhaps because Bruce has fallen to his knees.

It’s been, what, five years. Five years of this. The idea of this man, invading every part of Bruce, every corner of his mind. Hopeless to do anything but surrender to it, and apologize for the fact that… it puts all of the world’s responsibility on Clark’s shoulders, when Bruce _knows_ that Clark doesn’t deserve to bear that weight.

“Bruce,” Clark says again, softer, “You don’t need to… you don’t need to do any of this…”

“I don’t know what else I can do,” Bruce says.

 

If Bruce were listening, he would hear Clark take a deep, slow breath. If he were watching, he would see Clark shut his eyes and re-center himself, re-align himself with the person he chooses to be.

 

Then, Clark’s arms wrap around Bruce, solid and warm. “Alright,” Clark is saying, “Alright.”

Bruce is shivering. Part of him, waiting for some sort of death, like the Superman was only waiting for this moment, for permission, to finally take Bruce’s life. Another part of him, cupping his hands around pearls and leaning into the man’s shoulder.

Clark’s voice, calm, unperturbed: “I know it’s very difficult for you to trust people. I appreciate the trust you’ve shown me.  I hope that I can find some way to repay that trust.”

“You trusted me to save your mother,” Bruce mumbles, “you trusted me to send you to a… fucking magic island, in the middle of nowhere.”

Clark grins – Bruce can’t see his face, somewhere over Bruce’s shoulder, but he can hear it in Clark’s voice when he says, “I guess you’re right. Still.” Fingers in Bruce’s hair, cradling. “I want us to be on good terms. Equal footing.”

“We’ll never be equal.”

Clark pulls away, and Bruce looks up at him – this close, eerily beautiful. In the moonlight. More than anything else – kind. The type of man that Bruce wants nothing more than to support. Somehow. Some way. “Okay,” says Clark.

What exactly he’s agreeing with is unclear. It doesn’t matter, though. The relief is palpable. Weight off Bruce’s shoulders that he’s been bearing for five years. Or four decades.

“Tomorrow,” Clark promises, “we leave the island. We’ll get the team together. We’ll work things out. And this…” he shakes his head, “You don’t need to do any more than this, Bruce, I understand, alright? You don’t need to… commodify yourself. We’ll be partners. Batman and Superman working together.”

Bruce lets out a trembling breath, and then nods. Not dead, not saved. Partners.

Somewhere in the pit of his heart, there’s a part of Bruce railing against this in fear.  What if, what if, what if everything goes horribly wrong, catastrophizing like always. What if Clark is pitying him. What if Clark will take over the world. He shoves it down. He doesn’t want it anymore. He wants this – trust, and understanding. The approval of some sort of God.

Clark well, and whole, and at peace, and forgiving Bruce for everything.

Clark runs a thumb down Bruce’s cheek, and Bruce is reminded of Aëlla’s scar. “Someday,” he whispers to Clark, “they’re gonna add you to that pantheon.”

Clark’s eyes widen, and he grins, and he says, “Oh, gee, Bruce, you’ve really got to go sleep.”

“You’ll still be here, tomorrow? Not a figment of my imagination?” Bruce says softly, mostly joking, a bit not-joking.

“I’ll still be here,” Clark promises, and helps Bruce to his feet. “You can rely on me.”

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [my tumblr](http://mitzvahmelting.tumblr.com)


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